Other Life Existed For Millions Even Billions Of Years. Dinosaurs Roamed For 120 Million Years -

[TheMastersNemesis]

And millions of years after that other animals lived & evolved. We evolved over just a couple of millions of years and reached our prominence in just several thousand years. It is really weird and interesting that none of those other life forms achieved the same level of intelligence as we have when they were around multiple millions of years.

We may never understand completely how we came to be.

[triron]

1. You pose a profoundly interesting question:

I never thought of it with quite that perspective.
Yet why were the giant reptiles unable to attain even the faintest comparable
intelligence that apparently mammals and particularly primates have in a relatively
very short time in evolutionary terms?

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. That Is The Hugest Question. And -------

Why only one line of mammals were able to evolve to where we are with so many other mammals alive in the same time frame.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. There is a distant possibility that intelligent

life evolved on this planet in the past. Anything earlier than a few million years ago would essentially leave no traces.

[Caliman73]

4. Not sure I agree with that.

Anything is possible but it is highly unlikely that life as advanced as humans are right now would leave no traces of existence If we are able to find fossils of animals that existed several hundred million years ago, and fossils of less advanced hominids with their tools from several million years ago, it would stand to reason that civilizations with more advancements would leave behind at least some indications that they were here.

[JI7]

5. i'm not sure i understand . dinosaurs are from more than a few million years ago

and we have traces of that.

[lindysalsagal]

8. Intelligent beings would leave metals and other inorganics behind that would last long enough to be

found.

[Jim__]

14. NASA looked into that question: The Silurian Hypothesis.

From phys.org:

As a species, we humans tend to take it for granted that we are the only ones that live in sedentary communities, use tools, and alter our landscape to meet our needs. It is also a foregone conclusion that in the history of planet Earth, humans are the only species to develop machinery, automation, electricity, and mass communications – the hallmarks of industrial civilization.

But what if another industrial civilization existed on Earth millions of years ago? Would we be able to find evidence of it within the geological record today? By examining the impact human industrial civilization has had on Earth, a pair of researchers conducted a study that considers how such a civilization could be found and how this could have implications in the search for extra-terrestrial life.

The study, which recently appeared online under the title "The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record", was conducted by Gavin A. Schmidt and Adam Frank – a climatologist with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS) and an astronomer from the University of Rochester, respectively.

As they indicate in their study, the search for life on other planets has often involved looking to Earth-analogues to see what kind conditions life could exist under. However, this pursuit also entails the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) that would be capable of communicating with us. Naturally, it is assumed that any such civilization would need to develop and industrial base first.

more ...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

16. Yes. My astronomer son sent me links to two different

articles, including the one you've linked to, that discuss that possibility. Both articles are very clear in stating we have not yet uncovered such evidence, but also point out that the possibility of finding traces of an industrial civilization from many millions, even hundreds of millions of years ago, is vanishingly small.

Both articles go into some detail about how very little we have actually discovered so far, as well as the extent to which certain things that are currently happening with the climate and so on would either be extremely difficult to track millions of years from now, or would look just like past climate and catastrophe events.

It's a fascinating topic, especially as I've been kicking around an idea for a novel about intelligent dinosaurs at the time of the asteroid impact some 65 million years ago. I'm intending science fiction, not an actual claim of such intelligent dinosaurs.

[triron]

24. Sounds like a great idea for a scifi novel.

My bet is reptilian(like) sentience has happened on other planets already.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

28. I agree. With both a great idea for a novel

(if only I were a better writer) and the possibility that reptilian-like sentience has happened somewhere else, if not on this planet a very long time ago.

I think sometimes our imaginations fail us when trying to imagine life elsewhere. We are very locked into a "Life as we know it" mindset. All you have to do is look closely at octopuses. While I'm not trying to claim they have true sentience, and we can be very sure they haven't developed any technology, the very way they interact with the world is so very different from us, that if they were to evolve real intelligence we might be hard-pressed to recognize it. Until they started building houses and cities.

Anyway, I actually spend a lot of time trying to imagine an alien intelligent species, and find it interesting to do so.

[dameatball]

29. "The Descent" by Jeff Long. Just read it a couple weeks ago.

An epic adventure beneath the earth and through the gates of hell.....

[OriginalGeek]

32. Well Duh.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

6. Simple answer from a simple man...

Species evolved according to their needs to survive and nothing more. Our ancestors by comparison were a very fragile species and had to advance to survive. Some days I think we overshot the mark.

We can only think in human terms, as if there's something that should drive evolution toward owning McMansions, cars and cell phones. Sorry, not the case.

Dinosaurs had everything they needed and were perhaps far more content than us. They just never learned to shoot down asteroids.

Besides, who the hell says we're so intelligent? I've never heard of elephants building fences and bombing opposing herds, LOL.

.......

[lindysalsagal]

9. Well....there was that whole predator-fight-or-flight thing. Not too pleasant to be under

constant attack from hungry predators....

They had better reasons than we do, of course. We don't hurt to survive: We just seem to be destructive for no reason at all.

[joshcryer]

11. Dinosaurs were apex predators, at the top of the food chain, because of their biology.

It's one thing to be fast, nimble, and eat the little rats that scurry on the ground. It's another thing entirely to be relatively slow, but have high endurance, and using intelligence to ones advantage.

I suspect that once we do find life out there in the galaxy, it'll be found to be dinosaur-like in nature, and that will help explain the Fermi Paradox.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

12. Probability and statistics was not my strongest suite but...

I found it very interesting and practical in life. One of my more mathematically-inclined engineering friends claims probability says there should be at least one exact clone of the earth somewhere in the universe. I have not yet accepted that one.

We humans are really babes in arms in the relative terms of intelligence in our universe, as we don't even know the answers to very fundamental questions of physics. Examples: What is a magnetic field?, or what is a subatomic particle made of?

I do think anthropology and archaeology make for very interesting reading in my retirement years. It's a mental teaser to try and imagine what our lives were like millions of years ago.

Thanks!.......

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. *Some* dinosaurs were apex predators; many weren't

It's rather like saying "mammals are apex predators...". There's a lot of variety in both groups. And small predatory dinosaurs could be prey for larger ones.

[joshcryer]

33. You are right of course.

I meant to argue that the apex dinosaurs (of which there were many over the millennia) were likely completely and utterly dominant over mammals. The earliest mammals were little rat-like creatures about 160 million years ago. But the dinos dominated for another 100 million years or so until they were wiped out. 100 million years with both reptiles and mammals means that the reptiles had a significant and impressive selection advantage. For every apex dino there were probably dozens if not thousands of smaller ones that ate the mammals.

[StevieM]

23. THANK YOU!!! I have been thinking about that possibility for a long time now.

It is nice to finally have someone to talk about it with.

I think that maybe most planets that harbor advanced animal life never get past the Dinosaur stage. As I understand it, the asteroid that hit the Yucatan hit in the worst possible place.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39922998

Maybe most planets that have dinosaur-type creatures don't get hit with asteroids that powerful and in the worst possible location. And their dinosaurs manage to survive whatever challenges they do face.

Of course, I do have to wonder how their evolution of life was affected by something like "the great dying," which erased almost all life on Earth (the Permian-Triassic extinction event). It was likely initiated by large amounts of methane, released by volcanism in the Siberian Traps, causing the planet to dramatically warm. Dinosaurs could not have survived that.

Maybe a planet needs to first have a P-T extinction event to wipe out most life and lay the groundwork for an evolutionary paradigm that allows for a phase with dinosaurs and small underground mammals. Then the dinosaurs die off in a devastating asteroid hit--if it happens--while the mammals survive.

I am thinking that the P-T type extinction event is common. But the devastating asteroid hit, in the worst possible place, is exceedingly rare.

[triron]

25. But we don't know that evolution might have produced sentient reptiles

(or reptile relatives) given enough time.

[StevieM]

27. My point is that Dinosaur-type creatures would not have been intelligent anywhere.

And maybe they are always destined to evolve.

First, every planet will have some event like the P-T extinction. Then the groundwork will be laid for the evolution of reptile relatives. I think that evolution may naturally go in that direction, even if it first takes a mass extinction, or a few mass extinctions, until it is ready to happen.

Perhaps mammal-type creatures cannot be expected to come into being without the same factors that allow for their creation also creating dinosaur-type creatures. And maybe mammals cannot be expected to rise unless the dinosaurs are wiped out by an event that also allows the mammals to survive.

It seems plausible that a global warming event, like the P-T extinction, will also kill the mammals, including underground ones. So perhaps the only way for mammals to survive, while dinosaurs die off, is to have an impact event like the asteroid hit--which is exceedingly rare.

[joshcryer]

34. Exactly, you don't *have* to be intelligent to be the dominant species.

Or group of species. As long as you are the best eater and the best breeder you will last a long time.

The dinos ruled the planet for hundreds of millions of years but they never made technology, industry, etc, because they didn't have to. Their progeny were able to breed and spread because they were just good at ... breading and spreading.

I think selecting for multi-cellular life is very probable. I think that aquatic fish like creatures is next. I think land walkers that are like dinos are very likely. What goes from there is going to be more and more chance and environment and circumstances. I think there's no real reason for mammals to exist except to adapt to a wildly changing environment.

[Caliman73]

7. True. We likely will never know.

I would imagine however, that part of how we came to be is because of our adaptability. Most species found their ecological niche. They adapted into homeostasis with their environment and unless there was a geological event that occurred or some other planetary force that prompted adaptation for survival, they remained in their current state. Humans being what we are, adapt the environment to suit our needs (for better or worse). We have the power to transform the entire ecosystem at this point and unfortunately we are doing so to the point where we are going to kill ourselves off, or create a chain of events which will necessitate our adaptation and possible evolution. How we got the big brains is the mystery, but like I said, because we had relatively little else to ensure our survival against stronger, faster animals with bigger teeth and sharper claws, our ability to think beyond our immediate situation, our ability to coordinate and document our situation, and our ability to radically manipulate our environment make it so that we do not live in homeostasis with our environment so we will likely need to find other environments to adapt or create our own extinction (geeze I went dark fast).

[joshcryer]

10. The great filter theory.

I believe that dinosaurs never had a need to select for intelligence and until they were wiped out there was never an evolutionary advantage to being intelligent. We know that humans have the least amount of genetic diversity of most species and that's because we're all descended from one small group of apes that managed to survive because of their intellect.

[exboyfil]

13. Isaac Arthur has some fascinating YouTube videos

On this topic. I personally am in the Rare Earth camp. Technological life is exceedingly rare. We are early to the game and we don't have all that much longer on our planet being in the Goldilocks zone. The biggest evidence beyond what we know about biology is the lack of any galactic stretching Dyson Swarm civilizations in the surrounding observable galaxies.

[retread]

15. In terms of long term growth and health of a species and of the environment in which we live,

I'm not certain the term "intelligence" applies. It is a level of awareness that exceeds previous species. Some have called this awareness insanity not intelligence.

[hunter]

18. Maybe the hyper-intelligent dinosaurs made everything out of wood.

What if cell phones grew on trees and could be thrown on the compost heap when they broke...

Suppose whenever some dinosaur species got smart enough to be noticed by the Galactic Federation, or they learned to travel great distances by stepping outside of familiar three dimensional space, that they all left Earth for the nearest Dyson Sphere or sideband universe, covering their tracks and erasing all evidence of their previous existence here.

Making things out of metal could be a primitive and poisonous technology many intelligent species bypass.

It would be funny if upon joining the interstellar society we discover many earth species are already there, from our Neanderthal cousins, to dolphins, to birds and other dinosaur species we don't know of.

Maybe burning fossil fuels and using metal technology disqualify a species from interstellar society.

[MineralMan]

19. Actually, we understand quite well how we came to be.

The evolutionary trail that leads to humans is rich with evidence.

So, I'm not quite sure what you are talking about.

[0rganism]

20. perhaps overdeveloped brains are an evolutionary disadvantage?

as you say, dinosaurs roamed for 120 million years. homo sapiens sapiens exist for a few hundred thousand years, with organized agricultural civilization for 10000 years or so, and already we're in a position to wipe out most of the biosphere one way or another; frankly, the long term retrospective doesn't exactly shower humanity with glowing recommendations.

[dameatball]

30. Good point. Dinosaurs developed under a relatively stable set of conditions and were theoretically

victims of outside forces that changed that stable environment after a very long term dominance. "Intelligent" species develop the capability of exterminating themselves without nature's assistance in a much shorter period of time.

[HopeAgain]

31. This is a crucial point

Often overlooked. A species so efficient that it could drain it's entire environment of the resources it needs to survive into the future. That can use it's intellect to create massive weapons that it is likely to use out of emotions controlled by pre-intellect instincts. Has our intellect truly evolved to the extent that it can override some of our pre-self-realization instincts, such as to horde and to fight?

[cbdo2007]

21. All life on Earth didn't necessarily begin on Earth...

Probably some much more advanced civilization than ours, many hundreds of millions of years ago, found a way to find "habitable" planets in the ideal location compared to their sun, and sent out pods with cells in them, just like we probably will in the future when we get desperate and feel like our planet is a lost cause.

We have no idea what those cells will evolve into but at least it will give life a chance to continue to exist on these other planets when ours turns into what Venus is now.

[Oneironaut]

22. I think it's b/c evolution is generally a forward-moving process

Natural selection with no influence by external effects (meteors crashing to earth, disease, etc) generally creates a better(ish) version of an animal when compared to its predecessor. Better in this context means more suited to survive. Intelligence boosts chance of survival.

It makes more sense if you think of humans as another link in a chain that started with single-cell organisms.

[Dave Starsky]

26. Here's something that will blow your mind.

Sharks have been around longer than trees.

If that doesn't rock your world, nothing will. Evolution and extinction-level events are amazing.

[lanlady]

35. We humans owe it all to cooking

I read an interesting book a few years ago which posited that humans developed intelligence thanks to some unknown early ancestor who, accidentally or experimentally, threw meat on a fire and discovered it was tastier and easier to eat than uncooked meat.

But unbeknownst to that prehistoric gourmand, cooked meat also takes much less time for the body to completely digest (about 4 hours, if memory serves) than uncooked (about 12 hours), judging by how long it takes apes to digest their meals. This fact alone freed up a tremendous amount of calories that ended up being “spent” on brain development and other ultimately useful functions.

Pretty nice theory, in my opinion.

[Blue_true]

40. That is a neat theory.

I have read briefly about the evolution of humans, but nothing in detail.

BTW, the meat making us human theory, if proven contradicts accepted beliefs like vegan is best for us.

[aidbo]

36. People tend to think of evolution as progressing toward some 'better' thing.

But that’s not really how it works.

So if dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals fit a niche very well the there isn’t really any selective pressure to change them. Think of sharks that have existed as a species since before dinosaurs and are largely unchanged even now. And if there is then a sudden change in environment like say, an asteroid crashing into the earth it would be difficult to evolve quick enough to adapt. Then the smaller feathered dinosaurs would have an advantage over the bigger beasts because they need less food (smaller body) and have feathers to insulate against the cold. Same with warm blooded small mammals that we’re related to.

Our best guess right now as to where modern humans evolved puts it in Eastern Africa near the great Rift Valley. During a time of radical climate swings and geologic upheaval. This kind of environment could provide a selective pressure for a small primate that walks upright to develope high intelligence to cope with the strange goings on around it. And if that higher intelligence provides an advantage to survival, then they will pass their genes along and the rest is (pre)history .

[Blue_true]

37. Humans go back around 11-13 million years.

Dinosaurs were the descendants of smaller lizard like species that roamed the earth for up to two hundred million years, from just after the Great Dying (Third Mass Extinction event) up to the rise of the dinosaurs, some even lived side by side with their larger, more dominant cousins, until the Fifth Mass Extinction dropped the curtains on most except some larger lizards, like Gilas.

Human beings are a relatively new specie at 11-13 million years, evolving over that time to us.

The undisputed champions of survival? Sharks. Their line go back to just after the First Mass Extinction, about 480 million years ago.

[uriel1972]

38. *cough* bacteria *cough*

[Blue_true]

39. Ok, if you include to that level.

Simple life forms have been here since the earth first formed a cool crust, landmass and bodies of water.

Sometimes I think of what would happen if alien bacteria, say from another star system, made it's way to earth and took up residence. In theory, we and all other living things may not have the physiology needed to fight it off, and may perish as a result. BTW, such is a concern with sending something to Mars or a Jovian moon and bringing that soacecraft back to earth. What would it contain that we have never dealt with? And if scientists did make adjustments to prevent introduction of something dangerous here, how will they confirm that all of it has been neutralized before the spacecraft land back on earth?

In theory, alien bacteria can be killed by taking the spacecraft close to the sun and letting solar wind have at it, before bringing it back to earth. But would that clean everywhere, like internal crevices?

[GaYellowDawg]

41. THE SINGULAR OF "SPECIES" IS NOT "SPECIE"

It's "species." It's like the word "sheep." Singular and plural are the same. Sorry to yell, but that's one of my biggest pet peeves.

[Blue_true]

42. Thanks for the correction.

Maybe I was biased by preference, using species, to me, could imply different classes of human beings, specie does not, it says only one class period. I stand corrected though.

[GaYellowDawg]

43. Here's an example.

You could state that although several species have arisen in the genus Homo, only one species is extant: Homo sapiens. "Specie" is not correct under any circumstance. There is no such term in biology. The same word - species - is used for one species, or many species.

Also, in taxonomy, a class is a very broad group, only one level down from a phylum. An example would be class Insecta.