Giant Creatures That Lived 500,000,000 Years Ago

[ScienceRocks]

We should bring them all back

 

[Likkmee]

Wow. That long. The pre Palin era

 

[Gracie]

Great thread..until he ruined it with the comment underneath the vid.

 

[Gracie]

Minus the bickering crap making it about political party, it IS an interesting vid. Too bad it got smooshed with the hate.

 

[WillMunny]

Jurassic Park style cloning couldn't work in real life because over millions of years, a planet's atmosphere is always gradually, naturally changing in chemistry. So if you cloned something that lived half a billion years ago, today's atmosphere would probably kill it. And its immune system would be genetically designed for bacteria species that lived back then, not today's bacteria. So even if today's atmosphere didn't kill it, today's germs surely would.

 

[RWS]

 

[ChrisL]

It's just incredible to think that these monsters were actually real and that we actually walk in their footsteps. I find that fact just amazing!

 

[ThunderKiss1965]

The largest animal that ever lived is a living one, the Blue Whale.

 

[WillMunny]

The largest animal that ever lived is a living one, the Blue Whale.

That's certainly true at least in the most recent many millions of years. A blue whale is the only lifeform on this planet which has the physical measurements of an average Boeing jet. Except the whale is probably far heavier.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Jurassic Park style cloning couldn't work in real life because over millions of years, a planet's atmosphere is always gradually, naturally changing in chemistry. So if you cloned something that lived half a billion years ago, today's atmosphere would probably kill it. And its immune system would be genetically designed for bacteria species that lived back then, not today's bacteria. So even if today's atmosphere didn't kill it, today's germs surely would.

Hmm, you're way off the mark, there. While the proportions of the contents of the atnosphere have changed over time, that would not adversely affect those animals anymore than slightly raising or lowering the oxygen content of a room would harm you.

Secondly, immune systems aren't catered to "existing bacteria". In fact, that's the entire point of an immune system...to deal with new, emerging threats. Every cold you catch is the first time you have ever encountered that specific virus.

The real reason that sort of cloning will never work is that we will never find an intact, full or nearly-conplete genome from creatures which existed that long ago. We would also have a very tough time replicating the chemical environment of their gestation/eggs.

 

[WillMunny]

Jurassic Park style cloning couldn't work in real life because over millions of years, a planet's atmosphere is always gradually, naturally changing in chemistry. So if you cloned something that lived half a billion years ago, today's atmosphere would probably kill it. And its immune system would be genetically designed for bacteria species that lived back then, not today's bacteria. So even if today's atmosphere didn't kill it, today's germs surely would.

Hmm, you're way off the mark, there. While the proportions of the contents of the atnosphere have changed over time, that would not adversely affect those animals anymore than slightly raising or lowering the oxygen content of a room would harm you.

Secondly, immune systems aren't catered to "existing bacteria". In fact, that's the entire point of an immune system...to deal with new, emerging threats. Every cold you catch is the first time you have ever encountered that specific virus.

The real reason that sort of cloning will never work is that we will never find an intact, full or nearly-conplete genome from creatures which existed that long ago. We would also have a very tough time replicating the chemical environment of their gestation/eggs.

Almost correct, there are plenty of germs that any advanced lifeform could adapt to - like the countless cold viruses - but there are also some germ species a half-billion-year-old species wouldn't be adapted to. In the past few centuries huge amounts of American Indians - exact same species as whites - died after being exposed to germs that whites were immune to but Indians weren't; because the two races evolved isolated from each other for thousands of years and even in that tiny, evolutionary time their immune systems were different enough to result in huge amounts of death on the part of Native Americans. Anthropology-wise, whites and Amerindians evolved separately for only a few hundred thousand years. Imagine the immune system chemistry differences of a creature separated from us by half a billion years.

As far as atmosphere goes, there was a time hundreds of millions of years ago when Earth's atmosphere had 30% more oxygen that it does now, & enough extra CO2 to kill US if we were there. That's why prehistoric insects were the size of house cats. It's hard to imagine such creatures living in the surprisingly low-oxygen content our atmosphere has today.

 

[ChrisL]

I can't imagine bugs being that big. That is disturbing.