Yes, that is the easy part. The hard part is having them survive in isolation on an ATL island and causing no butterflies for 64+ million years until their uninhabited (by humans at any rate) island is "discovered" by 16th & 17th Century AD explorers.
Lost Continent of Dinosaurs (Southern Indian ocean)
- Thread starter SunilTanna
- Start date
Tom Kalbfus
Banned
Why not call this place "Skull Island" and have a ship called the Venture with movie crew in the 1930s explore this island and bring back a giant ape to Manhattan, which then breaks loose and rampages through the city, climbs the Empire State building and is shot down by National Guard biplanes? Yes, I've seen that movie, and its called King Kong. I think the story of King Kong can be called Alternate History, whats interesting is the book published afterwards about the flora and fauna of Skull Island and how that island sinks beneath the waves sometime in the late 1940s to conform that timeline to our own.
I just don't see the need of the authors for conforming their own imaginary past to our own history, why don't they just let the butterflies take effect and let the fact of Skull Islands discovery do what it will to the history books of that timeline?
A similar effect occured with a television series called War of the Worlds, this was a sequel of the 1950s movie by George Pal, but the writers of the TV series had to mysteriously make the entire population mysteriously forget the entire invasion of all those war machines, so they can come from a world similar to ours - I just don't get this mysterious adversion to alternate history and why they always feel they have to make that "square peg fit in that round hole".
Obviously a world where the Martians did invade in the 1950s and then died of Eartly germs would be a different one from the one we live in today, I don't understand this comformalism. Would anyone care to speculate why this line of story writing it so popular, that they have to make whatever fictional event fit in with our own past no matter how big it is?
I just don't see the need of the authors for conforming their own imaginary past to our own history, why don't they just let the butterflies take effect and let the fact of Skull Islands discovery do what it will to the history books of that timeline?
A similar effect occured with a television series called War of the Worlds, this was a sequel of the 1950s movie by George Pal, but the writers of the TV series had to mysteriously make the entire population mysteriously forget the entire invasion of all those war machines, so they can come from a world similar to ours - I just don't get this mysterious adversion to alternate history and why they always feel they have to make that "square peg fit in that round hole".
Obviously a world where the Martians did invade in the 1950s and then died of Eartly germs would be a different one from the one we live in today, I don't understand this comformalism. Would anyone care to speculate why this line of story writing it so popular, that they have to make whatever fictional event fit in with our own past no matter how big it is?
I don't think this belongs in ASB, I think it belongs in Books. Whe are discussing a earlier discovery of ERB's Lost Continent.
Given a large Volcanic Caldera, with the Walls protecting the inside from the KT, and the volcanic Hot Springs providing the necessary Micro Climate, they could survive.
However they would not be the Giants of 65 million years ago. Confined to a Small Island [even Greenland sized is small for this], they would get much smaller.
they would be like the Pygmy Elephants and Rhinos that used to inhabit the Mediterranean islands.
Whether Francis Drake or the Crew of the U- 191 The Animals would end up in Menageries [zoos].
Given a large Volcanic Caldera, with the Walls protecting the inside from the KT, and the volcanic Hot Springs providing the necessary Micro Climate, they could survive.
However they would not be the Giants of 65 million years ago. Confined to a Small Island [even Greenland sized is small for this], they would get much smaller.
they would be like the Pygmy Elephants and Rhinos that used to inhabit the Mediterranean islands.
Whether Francis Drake or the Crew of the U- 191 The Animals would end up in Menageries [zoos].
The whole idea is simply impossible.
Being on a remote island helps not at all as the KT extinction event was caused primarily by a global firestorm created by gigatons of molten rock falling from orbit after being blasted into space by the Yucatan Impactor from the crater.
No animal larger than a small dog survived anywhere on Earth, and they were saved by burrowing. The temperature of the Sky was over 200C..a huge microwave oven.
Every tree on Earth burned, the rain was acid, the temperature after the burn plunged below zero, again globally, due to the Earth being shrouded in clouds for several years after the event.
Forget Lost Worlds anywhere. All larger animals died.
Being on a remote island helps not at all as the KT extinction event was caused primarily by a global firestorm created by gigatons of molten rock falling from orbit after being blasted into space by the Yucatan Impactor from the crater.
No animal larger than a small dog survived anywhere on Earth, and they were saved by burrowing. The temperature of the Sky was over 200C..a huge microwave oven.
Every tree on Earth burned, the rain was acid, the temperature after the burn plunged below zero, again globally, due to the Earth being shrouded in clouds for several years after the event.
Forget Lost Worlds anywhere. All larger animals died.
In many ways, the birds are the inheritors from the dinosaurs. So a continent of birds and reptiles, isolated for millions of years from mammalian infiltration, would eventually come to resemble a lost continent of dinosaurs.
As for the KT impact theory, it's popular science. Not completely implausible popular science, but to take a dogmatic approach to the extinction event is a little silly.
This doesn't classify as ASB, this classifies as a geological/biological what-if, which is allowed in this forum. In these sorts of situations, assuming a 65 billion year butterfly effect is allowable for the reason it is the only way a sensible discussion is possible.
As for the KT impact theory, it's popular science. Not completely implausible popular science, but to take a dogmatic approach to the extinction event is a little silly.
This doesn't classify as ASB, this classifies as a geological/biological what-if, which is allowed in this forum. In these sorts of situations, assuming a 65 billion year butterfly effect is allowable for the reason it is the only way a sensible discussion is possible.
It's hardly popular science, but is the accepted cause of the Cretacious Event with hardly a dissenting voice from paleontologists anywhere.
We know precisely what happens when a 12 kilometer impactor travelling at 20 kps hits a rocky terrestrial world, and our knowledge comes not only from mathematical grounds but the record of the rocks and video images of the 1994 Jupiter comet impacts.
We have global deposits of irridium, charcoal, and tektites, plus the fossil record of extinctions, plus a damned great 65 myo crater in Yucatan.
To me it seems silly to imagine any place on Earth escaping the effects of the impact.
The only way to get dinos surviving is to nudge the impactor away. The dinos probably wouldn't change much from the late Triassic to today...they hadn't for the previous 100my, except for individual species being replaced by others using the same ecological niche.
We know precisely what happens when a 12 kilometer impactor travelling at 20 kps hits a rocky terrestrial world, and our knowledge comes not only from mathematical grounds but the record of the rocks and video images of the 1994 Jupiter comet impacts.
We have global deposits of irridium, charcoal, and tektites, plus the fossil record of extinctions, plus a damned great 65 myo crater in Yucatan.
To me it seems silly to imagine any place on Earth escaping the effects of the impact.
The only way to get dinos surviving is to nudge the impactor away. The dinos probably wouldn't change much from the late Triassic to today...they hadn't for the previous 100my, except for individual species being replaced by others using the same ecological niche.
To me it doesn't, since a lot of things survived the impact, including some dinosaurs (birds), mammals, crocodilians, champosaurs, turtles (including sea turtles), and most freshwater fish.
Not to mention there were fairly small dinosaurs (turkey-to-chicken sized) with fairly indiscriminate diets right up to the end. To me it's far more odd not a single non-avian dinosaur managed to survive.
So yeah. Said island continent wouldn't need to have a full contingent. Maybe only two or three theropod species and an ornithischian species survive. Given 65 million years, they can radiate just fine.
Tom Kalbfus
Banned
There remains one possibility:
Birds on a remote enclave could have evolved back into dinosaurs. In fact that almost happened, the period following the K-T event was also know as the age of birds, some flightless birds grew to enourmous sizes, not quite as big as dinosaurs, but large enough to be a menace to a man-sized creature. Now imagine that continuing in some place such as Australia or an even more remotely isolated continent. The interesting thing is the Pacific Ocean is the only ocean with its own assocated tectonic plate, all other oceans are the boundaries between plates, the Pacific is different, now imagine if it had its own continent of "Pacifica".
In theory, this one possible outcome for this scenario, however this is admittedly a very unlikely possibility. The Voth
It did, it had an advanced race inhabiting it, it sank beneath the waves.............
That's simply not true. There are many who do not accept the Alvarez hypothesis as the cause of the extinction event. There were other comparably large meteor impacts during the Cretaceous period. I personally believe that the extinctions were caused by a combination of factors, not the impact alone. But to claim that the impact theory is the sole supported theory is disingenuous.
Funny thing
is that when first proposed By the Geologists, it was the Paleontologists who were most bitterly opposed.However as a new Generation of Paleontologists come to accept the scenario, it is the new generation of Geologists and Physicists who are leading the opposition.
AH.com, Where you can have serious debate about the plot devices of an ERB book.
Surely there were many causes of death on the coroners report on the Triassic extinctions, perhaps the dinos were being affected by other causes pre-impact. But the paleological evidence shows the layers below the KT layer full of dinosaur and other fossils, whilst above the KT layer is nothing. They were exterminated at the peak of their domination of Earth's ecology.
The only creatures to make it past the Event were burrowing land animals including crocodiles and frogs, and certain marine creatures. The marine equivalent of the dinos, the ammonites were exterminated too, probably due to the oceans being heavily polluted by acids precipitated from impact debris.
If only one species went, you can postulate other causes, but when you get a clean sweep across whole genuses, living in totally unrelated ecological niches from high savannah, polar tundras, tropical rainforests to deep and shallow oceans, there has to be a common cause.
Anyway either way, Skull Island is not a goer.
The only creatures to make it past the Event were burrowing land animals including crocodiles and frogs, and certain marine creatures. The marine equivalent of the dinos, the ammonites were exterminated too, probably due to the oceans being heavily polluted by acids precipitated from impact debris.
If only one species went, you can postulate other causes, but when you get a clean sweep across whole genuses, living in totally unrelated ecological niches from high savannah, polar tundras, tropical rainforests to deep and shallow oceans, there has to be a common cause.
Anyway either way, Skull Island is not a goer.