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A Scientist Says Humans Were Meant to Live Longer–Then the Dinosaurs Ruined It
- gardenfelder 3y agoA microbiologist named João Pedro de Magalhães has proposed the idea that the reign of dinosaurs forced mammals to speed up their reproductive cycle, eliminating key longevity genes
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago>The pressure to stay alive eliminated the genes needed for long life. Citing reptiles and other animals with a much slower biological aging process than mammals, de Magalhães hypothesizes that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals either lost or deactivated genes associated with long life. I can accept a hypothesis which surmises that in a cut-throat dinosaur era, small mammals which mature quickly enough to reproduce could be selected for as mammals which needed longer maturity times might never get to reproduce. However, this also implies there were longer living mammals which were selected against as the answer, rather than there being biological differences cold-blooded animals and warm blooded animals that might also affect longevity. Warm blooded metabolism is faster than cold blooded and also more complicated. How much of this proposed effect is just due to how different cold vs warm blooded biology is?