5 ms·

It only took our species a few hundred thousand years at most, while it's been hundreds of times longer than that since the dinosaurs went extinct. At the same

by Twisol 5y ago

It only took our species a few hundred thousand years at most, while it's been hundreds of times longer than that since the dinosaurs went extinct. At the same time, sharks never developed civilization, so who's to say?

cft 5y ago
Dinosaurs were the dominant species (including the sea), unlike sharks.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I mean, Dinosaurs weren't a species.
  - Twisol 5y ago
    To be entirely fair, neither is "shark" a single species... But yes -- my point was that no shark species formed a civilization over that vast period, so it's hard to say whether any dinosaur species would have.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      ok, fair enough.
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    This is a pedantic dismissal of the comment above. We all understood what he meant. If your intent is to educate HN on the difference between species, genus, family, order, ..., perhaps do so more constructively?
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I guess I just felt that there was quite a large number of dinosaur species for civilization to arise in, not to mention they were on land, so it might be weird to say sharks didn't develop civilization over a long period of time given the differences compared. But I suppose you didn't understand what I meant.
      - selestify 5y ago
        I don't think any of that was conveyed by the phrase "Dinosaurs weren't a species" :)
        bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        I guess I do have a tendency to not specify everything but to just leave some things as implied, that said I think the amount of dinosaur species vs. the amount of shark species is strongly implied when saying dinosaurs is not a species in context. The land thing was not as strongly implied but again one might consider it when thinking yeah dinosaurs aren't a species, neither are sharks but the numbers don't align...hmm,hmm oh yeah and also the dinosaur species covered many more possible environments.
        selestify 5y ago
        Haha I do that too sometimes. But for perspective, it's quite a leap for me (and it seems most others reading this too), and not at all "strongly implied" by your statement, even in context. I'm sure that chain of inference might be natural and automatic with your style of thinking, but my mind naturally goes down a completely different path when confronted with your initial statement, so it's probably best to elaborate what you're actually implying to avoid miscommunication :)
  - mkl 5y ago
    But the plural of "species" is "species". When you are talking about one species, you say "species". When you are talking about multiple species, like all the species of dinosaurs, you say "species". "Dinosaurs were the dominant species" is correct, talking about multiple species. "Humans are the dominant species" is correct, talking about one species.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      ok well I had to upvote that, despite it pointing out I'm an idiot.
- ascar 5y ago
  Also worth considering that humans became the dominant species after developing civilization or maybe by developing civilization.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Even pre-civilisation humans were having substantial impacts on local landscapes and ecosystems, particularly in terms of out-competing other top predators. "Civilisation" defined as "having established cities". Arguably much of North America and Australia would be pre-civilisation by this definition. There are some exceptions among Native Americans in North America, but most cultures seem to have been tribal and reasonably nomadic or based in small villages lacking the complex social and economic structures, as well as trade and diplomatic relations associated with cities. Pueblo culture would be the obvious exception, possibly also mound culture (Illinois / Mississippi Valley). This is not an area of expertise for me. And my point remains that even without signifificant cities or intensive capital, these cultures had profound iimpacts on their landscapes and were clearly an apex species.
- Contexti 5y ago
  I thought dinosaurs were not adapted to aquatic environments? Marine reptiles like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs were not dinosaurs. Spinosaurus, though, was semiaquatic.
tempestn 5y ago
Is it inevitable that given enough time, the dominant life form in a sufficiently hospitable environment will develop higher intelligence and civilization? I'm not sure we know whether that's the case or not.
- krisoft 5y ago
  “Dominant life form” is not really a well defined concept. I assume you would say humans are the dominant life form of the present day earth, and many would agree with that. Ants are more numerous, cattle and antarctic krill are heavier by biomass so clearly such simple metrics are not what we are after. And clearly back when humans started developing “higher inteligence” they were just funny monkeys running around the savana harased by jackals left and right. Very much not a “dominant life form” in any sense of the word. One could attribute any special significance to them only in hindsight by what they become, rather than what they were.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    True, more a matter of the intelligence resulting in dominance than the reverse. I think you could define dominant as, basically, top of the food chain - able to kill any other animal it wishes to, and able to defend itself from all others. It would certainly be possible to be dominant without high intelligence, but it seems unlikely it would be possible to be dominant over a competitor that has a significant intelligence advantage, assuming the competitor survives long enough to exploit it. But the question is, does that mean that if such an evolutionary path is possible in a given environment, it will always eventually occur? My guess would be yes, but I'm certainly not 100% confident. ('Eventually' meaning, say, within a hundred million years. Presumably given infinite time, everything possible would occur, so that's not really interesting.)
- andyp-kw 5y ago
  This is true. Even though some species excel in certain areas (beavers are good at building, dolphins can communicate), no other species come close to human intelligence. We don't know if there's some special sauce that makes humans unique.
mkl 5y ago
That's starting from a point almost at the finish line, with intelligent social dexterous tool-using fire-making apes. Really it took our species about 4 billion years. Every other living species has had just as long, and hasn't developed civilisation. There's every reason to think that the extinct dinosaurs, given 66 million more years, would be like every other non-human species.
- loonster 5y ago
  That got me wondering how long it took social insects to evolve. Did we have massive colonies 66 million years ago? Appears so. [0] [0] https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/2/406/1054064 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/2/406/1054064
  - airstrike 5y ago
    I'd listen to this thread as a podcast

by Twisol 5y ago

cft 5y ago

Dinosaurs were the dominant species (including the sea), unlike sharks.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I mean, Dinosaurs weren't a species.
- Twisol 5y ago
  To be entirely fair, neither is "shark" a single species... But yes -- my point was that no shark species formed a civilization over that vast period, so it's hard to say whether any dinosaur species would have.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    ok, fair enough.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  This is a pedantic dismissal of the comment above. We all understood what he meant. If your intent is to educate HN on the difference between species, genus, family, order, ..., perhaps do so more constructively?
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I guess I just felt that there was quite a large number of dinosaur species for civilization to arise in, not to mention they were on land, so it might be weird to say sharks didn't develop civilization over a long period of time given the differences compared. But I suppose you didn't understand what I meant.
    - selestify 5y ago
      I don't think any of that was conveyed by the phrase "Dinosaurs weren't a species" :)
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        I guess I do have a tendency to not specify everything but to just leave some things as implied, that said I think the amount of dinosaur species vs. the amount of shark species is strongly implied when saying dinosaurs is not a species in context. The land thing was not as strongly implied but again one might consider it when thinking yeah dinosaurs aren't a species, neither are sharks but the numbers don't align...hmm,hmm oh yeah and also the dinosaur species covered many more possible environments.
        selestify 5y ago
        Haha I do that too sometimes. But for perspective, it's quite a leap for me (and it seems most others reading this too), and not at all "strongly implied" by your statement, even in context. I'm sure that chain of inference might be natural and automatic with your style of thinking, but my mind naturally goes down a completely different path when confronted with your initial statement, so it's probably best to elaborate what you're actually implying to avoid miscommunication :)
- mkl 5y ago
  But the plural of "species" is "species". When you are talking about one species, you say "species". When you are talking about multiple species, like all the species of dinosaurs, you say "species". "Dinosaurs were the dominant species" is correct, talking about multiple species. "Humans are the dominant species" is correct, talking about one species.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    ok well I had to upvote that, despite it pointing out I'm an idiot.
ascar 5y ago
Also worth considering that humans became the dominant species after developing civilization or maybe by developing civilization.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Even pre-civilisation humans were having substantial impacts on local landscapes and ecosystems, particularly in terms of out-competing other top predators. "Civilisation" defined as "having established cities". Arguably much of North America and Australia would be pre-civilisation by this definition. There are some exceptions among Native Americans in North America, but most cultures seem to have been tribal and reasonably nomadic or based in small villages lacking the complex social and economic structures, as well as trade and diplomatic relations associated with cities. Pueblo culture would be the obvious exception, possibly also mound culture (Illinois / Mississippi Valley). This is not an area of expertise for me. And my point remains that even without signifificant cities or intensive capital, these cultures had profound iimpacts on their landscapes and were clearly an apex species.
Contexti 5y ago
I thought dinosaurs were not adapted to aquatic environments? Marine reptiles like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs were not dinosaurs. Spinosaurus, though, was semiaquatic.

tempestn 5y ago

Is it inevitable that given enough time, the dominant life form in a sufficiently hospitable environment will develop higher intelligence and civilization? I'm not sure we know whether that's the case or not.

krisoft 5y ago
“Dominant life form” is not really a well defined concept. I assume you would say humans are the dominant life form of the present day earth, and many would agree with that. Ants are more numerous, cattle and antarctic krill are heavier by biomass so clearly such simple metrics are not what we are after. And clearly back when humans started developing “higher inteligence” they were just funny monkeys running around the savana harased by jackals left and right. Very much not a “dominant life form” in any sense of the word. One could attribute any special significance to them only in hindsight by what they become, rather than what they were.
- tempestn 5y ago
  True, more a matter of the intelligence resulting in dominance than the reverse. I think you could define dominant as, basically, top of the food chain - able to kill any other animal it wishes to, and able to defend itself from all others. It would certainly be possible to be dominant without high intelligence, but it seems unlikely it would be possible to be dominant over a competitor that has a significant intelligence advantage, assuming the competitor survives long enough to exploit it. But the question is, does that mean that if such an evolutionary path is possible in a given environment, it will always eventually occur? My guess would be yes, but I'm certainly not 100% confident. ('Eventually' meaning, say, within a hundred million years. Presumably given infinite time, everything possible would occur, so that's not really interesting.)
andyp-kw 5y ago
This is true. Even though some species excel in certain areas (beavers are good at building, dolphins can communicate), no other species come close to human intelligence. We don't know if there's some special sauce that makes humans unique.

mkl 5y ago

That's starting from a point almost at the finish line, with intelligent social dexterous tool-using fire-making apes. Really it took our species about 4 billion years. Every other living species has had just as long, and hasn't developed civilisation. There's every reason to think that the extinct dinosaurs, given 66 million more years, would be like every other non-human species.

loonster 5y ago
That got me wondering how long it took social insects to evolve. Did we have massive colonies 66 million years ago? Appears so. [0] [0] https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/2/406/1054064 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/32/2/406/1054064
- airstrike 5y ago
  I'd listen to this thread as a podcast