Lost Continent of Dinosaurs (Southern Indian ocean)

Let's put the Kerguelen Plateau above sea level. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Plateau

It's a smallish continent. Not big enough to mess up the climate or human development - history proceeds according to plan.

Some dinosaurs, mammal-like reptiles, giant temnospondyl amphibians, etc. survive on it.

Humans haven't reached it until the Age of Exploration.

What then?
 
We hunt whatevers there until its extinct or we leave it the hell alone, after whichever nation finds it first, has planted a flag.

:)
 
It'll be a COLD continent, so what ever's there will be furry/feathery...

How cold? It doesn't like that far South of Tasmania or South Africa?

Maybe we could warm it up with lots of hot volcanic springs, CO2 out gassing (somewhat trapped by weather conditions), and a therefore warmer microclimate?
 
The explorers get eaten. Please post things like this in the ASB forum.

Thats not fair. Its not really ASB anyway. With a POD early enough, it could be above sea-level.

Why don't you look for a pearl in the oyster, i.e. Instead of focusing on the specific question, ask yourself, What would be the effects if such creatures were found on a remote island?

:)
 
It is very cold. I had a TL where it was above sealevel and...yeah. It was little better then a anti-Greenland. Just compare where it is to Argentina and Chile. The current land there would be its northern tip and its south of New Zealand.


And yeah, obvious ASB, not even borderline.
 
Thats not fair. Its not really ASB anyway. With a POD early enough, it could be above sea-level.

With a POD early enough humans would be butterflied away. So all scenario's with dinosaurs and humans are ASB. Unless you wish to discuss how dinosaurs would have evolved on a small island while all around them they are extinct this is an ASB scenario.

Edit:
And remember there is nothing wrong with ASB scenarios. Some of them can be very interesting alternate history scenarios. Sadly on our site the ASB part is often used for ridiculious scenarios, not just very interesting but impossible alternate history scenarios.
 
Depends on if you believe in butterflies. It's fashionable now, but not so long ago inevitable deterministic theories of history and natural history were equally fashionable (e.g. Marxism).

In AH terms, you kill Caesar in infancy, and somebody conquers Gaul and becomes Roman dictator, with only modest changes... two hundred years later, history is back on track. 1000 years later, the difference is barely noticeable. Likewise if you kill Ug the caveman 50,000 years ago, or Fuzzy the proto-primate 60,000,000 years ago.

Putting that aside, I don't really see the problem with exploring this type of scenario.

Europeans thought the unexplored world was filled with monsters - what if it (partially) was?
 
There's an easier way to do this.

Let's say dinosaurs didn't die out around Antarctica, Right around K/T, South America and Australia were still attached, so dinosaurs spread back into these continents. Of course, as Antarctica cools, the dinosaurs die off there, but they survive on the other two continents.

The ithmus of Panama won't form until 3 million years before the present. Presumably some dinosaurs would get into North America. However, it's interesting to note that no animals in OTL from South America made it into Asia (ground sloths came the closest - they stopped at Alaska). There was also a South American bolide which hit only 300,000 years before this which is thought to have caused a South American mass extinction. So let's say no dinosaurs make it into Eurasia.

Australia is much easier, provided dinosaurs aren't strong enough swimmers to get to mainland Asia.

So you can get humans, presuming you wave away the huge butterflies caused by herbivorous dinosaurs changing vegetation patterns, and hence weather. Of course, history would end up looking totally unlike anything today.

If you wanted dinosaurs and something resembling modern history, they could always survive in Madagascar, or maybe New Zealand. But chances are, similar to OTL, the first inhabitants would wipe out all the large animals on these islands. So we'd be left with a few small dinosaurs, likely theropods, which would be seen in the ATL as being the avian version of the platypus.
 
Depends on if you believe in butterflies. It's fashionable now, but not so long ago inevitable deterministic theories of history and natural history were equally fashionable (e.g. Marxism).

In AH terms, you kill Caesar in infancy, and somebody conquers Gaul and becomes Roman dictator, with only modest changes... two hundred years later, history is back on track. 1000 years later, the difference is barely noticeable. Likewise if you kill Ug the caveman 50,000 years ago, or Fuzzy the proto-primate 60,000,000 years ago.

Putting that aside, I don't really see the problem with exploring this type of scenario.

Europeans thought the unexplored world was filled with monsters - what if it (partially) was?

Deterministic history doesn't mean that.
'Communism will always triumph'- that doesn't mean there'll be WW1 exactly the same as OTL and Russia going communist. More that there will be a WW1esque war with some country going communist. And even that is pushing it heavily.

ASB DOES NOT MEAN IMPOSSIBLE.
Even unlikely things that technically could happen are ASB. For instance the Germans suddenly unconditionally surrendering 2 days after invading the USSR.

If you want a ASB dinosaur world then you really have to do it with the Americas.
 
Deterministic history means exactly that. It's just the level and degree of determinacy that you're arguing about.

Some scientists (for example a lot of physicists) often assume that life on other planets would unwind according to the same basic planet as Earth for example. So you end up with 2 legged mammalian bipeds dominating the planet, and with only minor differences. I personally don't agree with that in other history or natural history. I think things are much more contingent and luck-orientated, but see as we can't do experiments, and don't have any other worlds or histories to compare to, I don't reject such ideas out of hand.

If you don't like a deterministic explanation - what about Many Worlds? (I don't agree with MW either for reasons I'm discussing in another thread, but don't reject automatically either). If every possible world and timelines exists, then there will an infinite variety of worlds, and a smaller (but still infinite) variety with humans and dinosaurs on it... and among those infinite varieties, there will even be an infinite number (a still smaller infinity) of human/dinosaur worlds with Caesar, Drakem, Napoleon and Hitler in their histories! There'll even a human/dinosaur worlds (again an infinite number, but a smaller yet infinity) with a successful Operation Sealion!




In any case, it's still interesting to consider what if dinosaurs did exist in a recognizable human history.
 
The link says it (might have) had fauna and flaura (whoever they are) 50 million years ago. So they get there however they got there in OTL.

:)
 
The link says it (might have) had fauna and flaura (whoever they are) 50 million years ago. So they get there however they got there in OTL.

:)

The flaura would get there the same way it got to any other isolated island, by water and by air. The fauna, well it is possible that a tribe of intelligent dinosaurs may have built a giant canoe and paddled over there. I think it will be found that the majority of any large land dwelling animals were brought over by ship.
 
The flaura would get there the same way it got to any other isolated island, by water and by air. The fauna, well it is possible that a tribe of intelligent dinosaurs may have built a giant canoe and paddled over there. I think it will be found that the majority of any large land dwelling animals were brought over by ship.

50 million years ago? Dinosaurs(ish)? By ship? Your bringing images of Jurassic Park to mind............

:)
 
Thats not fair. Its not really ASB anyway. With a POD early enough, it could be above sea-level.

Why don't you look for a pearl in the oyster, i.e. Instead of focusing on the specific question, ask yourself, What would be the effects if such creatures were found on a remote island?

:)

Agree. This is a geological WI, which is not ASB. However, it would still be necessary to explain why the K/T event led to the extinction of all large dinosauria everywhere in the world but not Kerguelen. Perhaps, it was recolonized very shortly after the event by several varieties of feathered flying dinosaurs (some "birds" and some other theropod types with feathered forearms rather than highly specialized wings) which then underwent a secondary re-adaptation to terrestrial life, leadingto the redevolpment of large dinosauria to fill many niches on the island - certainly not the "dinosaurs" from the fossil record, but something vaguely similar.
 
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