4 ms·

To my untrained eye, dinosaurs all look the same (generally speaking), despite being on a timescale of hundreds of millions of years. I always wondered why dur

To my untrained eye, dinosaurs all look the same (generally speaking), despite being on a timescale of hundreds of millions of years. I always wondered why during such a long time they never evolved into something brighter (or their version of us). I understand evolution pressure (or lack of) and everything but still this is weird. I feel that this is something that is rarely addressed, despite being a good example of how evolution works and what drives it.

Phrenzy 4y ago
Animals don't use DNA to reproduce. DNA uses animals to reproduce. If a particular collection of building instructions can last long enough to reproduce itself, it is good enough. Increased intelligence would be an unneeded luxury.
dTal 4y ago
They don't look at all the same though? A triceratops looks more similar to a rhino than to a T-Rex. And neither of them look remotely like a brachiasaur.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  True, but they seem (again, to the untrained eye) less diverse than today's fauna. Untrained eye = know about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. They did not seem to have evolved to use tools either, or some kind of burial process (though we do not probably know), or art-like creations (again, we probably do not know). What I meant with my comment is that we talk a lot about evolution and I find that dinosaurs spanning some 150 M years (vs 2 M for humans) are not used enough in presentations of evolution. It would probably be great to say: look, 150 M years of evolution changed this and that (say, minor changes) because of this and that (environment pressure, ...) as opposed to [something, humans for instance, or giraffes, or other examples usually used in such discussions] that only took X k/M years to go from A to B. I would find it a good message to convey, as everyone knows about dinosaurs but not that much about their time span.
  - ginko 4y ago
    > True, but they seem (again, to the untrained eye) less diverse than today's fauna. Untrained eye = know about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. That's mainly because we don't really know what they looked like apart from their general bone structure. Imagine we tried to reconstruct what modern mammals looked like from their bones so gave all of them short brownish fur.
steve_adams_86 4y ago
There are several fish and reptiles which seem to possess intelligence and which have had more or less the same body plans (as far as we can tell) for hundreds of millions of years. Being able to survive that long is literally the best case in known history. It’s far longer than our current form has survived and if you believe a mass extinction is occurring, perhaps humans aren’t all that good at surviving long-term at all. Yet sharks, squid, and crocodiles might be just fine for this extinction as well. Favouring intelligence like ours is extremely anthropocentric. It seems great to have MacBooks and rockets but the evidence for technology and the extent of our abilities actually serving us well has yet to be proven. It seems likely to me that dinosaurs shared common body plans because they worked really well. There was likely little pressure to change, and the body plans they had were consistently rewarded by the conditions on earth and competition between species. They survived crazy geological events over so many millions of years. It seems worth noting too that a lot of what we think they looked like is guess-work. It could turn out that they were actually far more diverse than we realize. And for that matter, although they did seem to follow common body plans, some species appeared to be quite different and diversified.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  These are very good points (I would add cockroaches to the list of winners in case of a massive problem), that reinforce my point that we do not use enough dinosaurs in the teaching of evolution. Having the perspective you mentioned challenges preconceptions (notably the "humans bright, dinosaurs stupid") Thanks for your comments.

Phrenzy 4y ago

Animals don't use DNA to reproduce. DNA uses animals to reproduce. If a particular collection of building instructions can last long enough to reproduce itself, it is good enough. Increased intelligence would be an unneeded luxury.

dTal 4y ago

They don't look at all the same though? A triceratops looks more similar to a rhino than to a T-Rex. And neither of them look remotely like a brachiasaur.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
True, but they seem (again, to the untrained eye) less diverse than today's fauna. Untrained eye = know about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. They did not seem to have evolved to use tools either, or some kind of burial process (though we do not probably know), or art-like creations (again, we probably do not know). What I meant with my comment is that we talk a lot about evolution and I find that dinosaurs spanning some 150 M years (vs 2 M for humans) are not used enough in presentations of evolution. It would probably be great to say: look, 150 M years of evolution changed this and that (say, minor changes) because of this and that (environment pressure, ...) as opposed to [something, humans for instance, or giraffes, or other examples usually used in such discussions] that only took X k/M years to go from A to B. I would find it a good message to convey, as everyone knows about dinosaurs but not that much about their time span.
- ginko 4y ago
  > True, but they seem (again, to the untrained eye) less diverse than today's fauna. Untrained eye = know about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. That's mainly because we don't really know what they looked like apart from their general bone structure. Imagine we tried to reconstruct what modern mammals looked like from their bones so gave all of them short brownish fur.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

There are several fish and reptiles which seem to possess intelligence and which have had more or less the same body plans (as far as we can tell) for hundreds of millions of years. Being able to survive that long is literally the best case in known history. It’s far longer than our current form has survived and if you believe a mass extinction is occurring, perhaps humans aren’t all that good at surviving long-term at all. Yet sharks, squid, and crocodiles might be just fine for this extinction as well. Favouring intelligence like ours is extremely anthropocentric. It seems great to have MacBooks and rockets but the evidence for technology and the extent of our abilities actually serving us well has yet to be proven. It seems likely to me that dinosaurs shared common body plans because they worked really well. There was likely little pressure to change, and the body plans they had were consistently rewarded by the conditions on earth and competition between species. They survived crazy geological events over so many millions of years. It seems worth noting too that a lot of what we think they looked like is guess-work. It could turn out that they were actually far more diverse than we realize. And for that matter, although they did seem to follow common body plans, some species appeared to be quite different and diversified.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
These are very good points (I would add cockroaches to the list of winners in case of a massive problem), that reinforce my point that we do not use enough dinosaurs in the teaching of evolution. Having the perspective you mentioned challenges preconceptions (notably the "humans bright, dinosaurs stupid") Thanks for your comments.