WI "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend" Actually Happened?

Berra

It's borderline but I dubt he get a good answer in ASB but it's not a bad question. My guess is a lot of extra selling power to all kind of pseudoscience. ("If science couldn't figure out that a hidden dinosaur live in Africa, how can we be sure the Earth isn't hollow and Hitler rule a tribe of crabb-people?")
 

MerryPrankster

Berra said:
It's borderline but I dubt he get a good answer in ASB but it's not a bad question. My guess is a lot of extra selling power to all kind of pseudoscience. ("If science couldn't figure out that a hidden dinosaur live in Africa, how can we be sure the Earth isn't hollow and Hitler rule a tribe of crabb-people?")
Click to expand...

I don't think cryptozoology is pseudoscience. They've found a few new animals, mostly non-weird ones like okapi.

Of course, just because something is stupid doesn't mean people won't believe it or try to use cryptozoology to bolster something ridiculous like phrenology, crystals, etc.
 

DG Valdron

Well, its unlikely that Baby is an actual known Sauropod. More likely a descended species.

The big impact is that we'll learn a hell of a lot more about dinosaur biology and anatomy. It will probably revolutionize the science of paleantology.

There may also be significant applications further down the road in terms of biology and molecular biology. We're just beginning to patent and copyright genes. To have access to the unique trove that's a sauropod lineage might have unfathomable potential.

Culturally, expect a runaway wave of dinosaur-mania like you wouldn't believe. Think Dino-flakes breakfast cereal. Dinosaurs would be bigger and crazier than in our own culture, likely get freighted with all sorts of metaphorical or symbolic significance.

Central Africa, the Congo, etc. would be the subject of massive scientific interest, and quite likely a vast amount of political and economic involvement (more so than presently). Lots more public scrutiny. A lot less stuff going on outside the headlines.

I think that there's a good case to be made that the world in the 25 years since Baby would be a subtly different place.
 

Hendryk

Banned
There would be a massive craze for cryptozoology to be sure. Michael Crichton would write Jurassic Park a few years ahead of schedule, and the general public would find it a more plausible premise than in OTL.

For the dinosaurs themselves discovery would be a mixed blessing. On the one hand they would be swiftly listed as endangered species, and efforts would be made to protect their habitat; on the other they may now have to face poachers and unscrupulous big game hunters, not to mention misdirected attempts to use them as tourist attractions and encroachment by poor local farmers.
 

MerryPrankster

DV's point got me thinking.

Assuming "Baby" and his species are the only surviving dinosaurs, why did they survive when no others did and why didn't they repopulate out of their equatorial enclave when whatever it was that killed the dinosaurs off ended?

(A more realistic surviving-dinosaur would probably be something smaller anyway, due to lower food requirements.)

One of the best arguments against the surviving-dinosaur hypothesis is that if they survived in numbers to prevent genetic bottlenecks in any location, they'd repopulate from there.

Of course, it could be that their range was significantly larger once before and the climactic changes of the Ice Age, some kind of disease or another, or human hunters killed them all off. That leaves the question of why there haven't been any bones found of more recent vintage, though.

Plus I think it was in the movie (and in mokele-mbembe stories anyway) that those who ate their flesh died--perhaps this population staved off human encroachment because they carried some kind of food-pathogen that the humans eventually learned to avoid?
 

MerryPrankster

About encroachment by local farmers, I thought that was already happening?

It's been close to 20 years since I saw the movie, but I remember the American scientist got word that some locals had killed one of the dinosaurs, eaten it, and were now sick. She came to investigate and that's how the dinos were found.

Big-game hunters and poachers--now that'd be a problem. The government of Congo, Cameroon, or wherever the movie actually took place would need to deploy a small army with shoot-to-kill authority to deter the horde of would-be dino-killers that would descend on the region in hopes of having an Apatosaurus head over their wet bar or selling dino parts to the Far East in hopes of making them into food items.

(No offense to Hendryk or other Sinophiles, but IIRC tiger penis soup is one reason tigers are an endangered species. An outright dinosaur would be even more tempting, particularly since people used to EAT fossils because they thought they were dragon bones.)
 
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