Dinosaur Death by Dwarfism
Andre Willers
24 Oct 2014
Synopsis:
We calculate the mass boundaries of end-viable dinosaurs after the angiosperm
revolution . Birds .
Discussion :
1.Dinosaur dwarfism occurred over a period of 50 million
years from 140 MYA to 90 MYA . See Appendix A and http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11303412
The ten largest known dinosaur species by weight, based on
published weight estimates.
From general principles in http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/04/infinite-probes2.html
And http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/10/prodigies-update-ii.html
(the Halting Problem)
We exclude the top
1/3 and take 70 tons as an upper dinosaur mass limit .
3.I cannot seem to find any reliable figures for energy per
hectare of angiosperms vs gymnosperm .
Why ? Nobody seems to have bothered to look . It is
difficult to understand .
Here is an estimate :
A pollinater (insect) covers a random walk area ~ pi *r*(n)^0.5 The gymnosperm travels roughly r in on
direction (wind)
We can then estimate the relative yield as (n)^0.5 , where n
is the distance foraging .
http://insected.arizona.edu/manduca/ins_many.html about 8000 insects per m^2 . Well , honeybees forage on average 50 m
radius ,say .
This gives a yield in
angiosperms of about 8000 over gymnosperms . Admittedly thumbsuck , but it
seems reasonable in lack of anything else .
4. Now , ratio 70 tons down by a factor of 8000 (we can do
this because weight ~energy~(size)^.333)
This gives 17.5 lbs ~7,95 kg .
Taking chickens for human use as an average after thousands
of years of breeding (http://books.google.co.za/books?id=Oq0rWJmzmg4C&pg=PA385&lpg=PA385&dq=average+weight+of+all+birds&source=bl&ots=YBAoHHdKBL&sig=nLAiFA8xxxxTIhgFBkpDHQIiokQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tuZKVNTjIIzmatL7gYgG&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=average%20weight%20of%20all%20birds&f=false)
at 2.25 kg , this gives a dinosaur cutoff point of 2.25 * 8000 ~ 18000kg ~ 8.18
tonnes . About the size of an elephant .
6. And the 55 lb (25 kg) extinction limit ?
Another one of God’s little jokes .
Scale 25 * 8000 ~ 200 tons up . Bigger than any dinosaur . (See para 2 above
)
There was no cutoff point .
The extinction was slow , as angiosperms slowly colonised
the land .
By the time the meteor struck , there were very few large
dinosaurs left .
7. Why didn’t dinosaurs simply hibernate ?
The large ones could not accumulate fat . Their bones could
not stand the weight .
They were all on a permanent diet , and shat a lot .
Like birds or chickens .
8. Bears learned the trick of diabetes .
Humans still have to .
That was a refreshing difference from the present
doom-and-gloom .
Watch out for Gaia .
Yours with flowers
Andre
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Appendix AA
Death of the Dinosaurs .
Andre
Willers
14 Dec 2008
This pulls
together the arguments in
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com :
"The Flower , the Dinosaur and Puff" and "Tunneling Nanotubes
."
Discussion :
Large land
dinosaurs and to a lesser extent , large sea-dinosaurs evolved in a gymnosperm
ecology with at least 1 000 to 10 000 times more free energy than an
angiosperm(flower) ecology .
This
decreased the number of large herbivores as angiosperms increased from 0% to
90% of plant species from about 140 million years ago (MYA) to 90 MYA .
The whole
land ecosystem had about 1 000 to 10 000 times less free energy .
A lot of
this washed out into the large , shallow continental basins . So these were
affected too , but to a lesser degree .
The
dinosaur ecology had spent about 100 million years evolving specialized tools
and size to compete in this ecology . They could not do a u-turn . So their
numbers decreased by factors of about 1
000 to 10 000 . This rendered them extremely vulnerable to shocks .
Chixilub (65 million years ago).
The final
shock .
The burning
of forests by ejecta from the giant meteor impact at Chixilub decreased food supply .
Surviving large dinosaurs could not survive in competition with smaller
dinosaurs . (Their numbers fell below survival levels .)
These
smaller dinosaurs went on to become Birds (not just small ones , but large
raptors too) . Mammals only took off about 15 million years after Chixilub .
But that is another scrambled egg story .
Large
mammals :
There is
fossil evidence that large mammals existed before Chixilub . But the same
argument as above applies . Size was the criterion . Any animal over about 20
kg which was integrated into the dinosaur-ecology did not survive .
Dinosaur
survivors :
Fossil
evidence of dinosaurs has also been found after the KT boundary . As expected.
It was not
a death-ray , you know .
Just sad ,
emaciated giants wandering around , eking out an existence a mouthful of
low-calorie leaves at a time , hooting for mates they can never find in a
wasteland of flowers . Almost like a vegetarian singles-bar after closing time
.
The
hidden cost of egg-laying as a survival strategy .
When things
are going good for the whole ecology , nothing can beat it .
But if
things go really badly for the whole ecology , egg-robbing and later
egg-cannibalism occur , until extinction .
The
middlesized survivors wiped themselves out in an orgy of egg-stealing .
(Eating the
seed-corn is the modern agricultural equivalent)
The single mammalian advantage .
With
mammals , the mother cannot eat the unborn baby , and cannot abandon it either.
The mother
has to guard the unborn as if it is her own life , because it is .
The Bird Switch .
Beaks for
teeth .
Teeth are
no use to eat large eggs , but beaks are .
If there is
not sufficient free energy or numbers to guard the nests of large eggs , the
egg-eaters darted in and pecked holes .
Beaks evolved to do this .
The
ecosystem collapse devoured itself down to the small bird level .
Only
smaller beaked forms survived to ramp up to fill empty ecological niches .
Angiosperms
evolved nuts ,seeds and fruits from this initial starting-point pari-passu with bird's beaks . Which is why
many seeds used in disseminating plants are egg-shaped . They evolved to make
it easy for birds' beaks adapted to egg-breaking to get inside .
Plants have
no problem in creating seeds that no bird can crack (eg coconut) , but why
should they ? There is no arms race here . More of a come-on .
Purely evolutionary
arguments apply here .
Birds are
excellent disseminators of fertilized seeds .
The
dinosaur-descendants have now adapted from gymnosperms to angiosperms .
The Age of Birds (circa 65 to 50 MYA)
Mammals did
not simply take over from dinosaurs . The dinosaur survivors evolved into some
large birds , herbivores and raptors both .(See any textbook) .
Our story
is not complete until we see what happened to them and why .
Well , they
are still around . (Ostriches) . In historical times , large ornithoids were
reported and painted in South America , New Zealand , Australia and North
Africa .
But note ,
no rock paintings in South Africa shows very large ornithoids . Since this is
where modern humans evolved , this is no surprise .
Once again
, egg-laying only beats mammalians if the free-energy is over a certain
threshold , enabling full-time nest guards . Why social insects are so small .
Thumbs and Legs .
Opposable
thumbs are one of humanity's proudest conceits . It makes possible most of
their material constructs .
Less
obvious is their ability to move the hands carrying things around from place to
place .
Thumbs
evolved from a branch-gripping appendage to an egg-gripping appendage during
this Age of Birds .
As
discussed above , most seeds and fruits evolved egg-shapes to allow for the
limitations of bird beaks . Mammals started to take over this role . Gripping
involving hands grasping around an oval object became better and better. So did
egg-stealing.
Potty training by Gaia .
In a canopied
forest , small mammals are nearly as efficient as birds as far as seed
dissemination is concerned . Their major advantage was fertilizer . Because
they did not have to fly , they could afford more weight . This faeces got
deposited with the pip . A much better chance of survival for the seed . While
the bird dumped every time it took flight . You can see the advantage for the
plant . (See previous posts about vit C)
The net
effect was that larger birds survived better in open areas . Exactly where we found
them . Initially , their eggs were not
as prone to thievery as the smaller birds . Indeed , size of eggs evolved
outside of the need of nutrition . (An ostrich egg is far too large for one
small ostrich.)
To get back
to thumbs . Have you ever tried to grip a large football with one hand ? Break
it? Then you know the frustration of your primordial ancestor facing exactly
the same problem with an egg . Eggs in the wild are very strong .
Grabbing an
egg with one or two hands and running like hell with an enraged parent in
pursuit is actually hard-coded in our genes . No wonder Rugby is so popular!
A major
factor tempting hominids out of the trees and onto the open savannah would then
be eggs . Accessible on open ground . A nicely packed , nutritious lunchbox .
All you need is a good one- or two handed grip and the ability to run fast on
two legs to the nearest tree .
Can you see
where this is taking us ?
No wonder
bi-pedalism evolved first . Egg stealers would have significant nutritional
advantage over scavengers .
The
nutritional value of an egg far outweighs other meat , fat or carbohydrate
sources.
Large (very
large) birds were all over the place initially .
As they
exhausted local areas , our intrepid egg-thieves would have to become bolder.
Everybody would get into the act . There are major sexual advantages . The
oldest jewelry are egg-shell pieces pierced ,polished , painted , strung ,etc .
After
fashion got into it , the poor birds stood no chance .
To hell
with sustainability and what the shaman says .
Fashion ,
hot or cold , is master of them all .
Competition
would segue into cursorial egg-thieves .
Run far ,
grab the eggs , run back even faster . Sooner or later they would have to
defend themselves .
The Quest
and Home .
The mighty
cursorial hunter was born , stalking the wily giant egg , overcoming the
guardian and running home with it in triumph . Mainly running .
Do you recognize the myth-root ?
(a quest
involving a lot of humorous running and
motion , but triumphing at the end at home .)
This is an
extremely powerful meme . Pre-language .
Watch any
TV show or read any book and you will see some variant of it .
Back
to the Savannah:
After the
eggs became scarce , get the birds . Then other animals .
And
civilization was up and running . Literally .
The large
birds became scarcer around human areas . Extinct later on .
Humans
are forever stealing somebody else's eggs and running .
Great fun ,
until they run into someone really powerful without a great sense of humour .
Better
opposable thumbs was a big advantage . It is no surprise then that opposable
thumbs evolved together with bi-pedalism . The peanut brain only became a
walnut later on with intra-species competition due to language .
The chicks
would go for the jock with long legs and big opposable thumbs .
Sigh . Has
anything changed ?
Thumbs and Sex .
Has anybody
researched size and opposability of thumbs to sexual success ? .
I know that
human females always notice hands , but I do not know the orders of significance
and how hard-wired it is .
From the
above , I would suspect that it was of such primary importance that every human
descendant now has this capability derived from sexual selection . But there is
still a degree of differentiation .
Notice the
attraction of guitarists , piano-players , surgeons , etc . Ask any girl
if she can imagine Casanova without thumbs .
Are male
thumb-rings sexier
? They used to be the prerogative of
rulers. I have noticed that wanabe alpha-males in the entertainment
industry have been wearing them lately . Archers used them , as well .
Females
wearing thumb-rings are a turn-off to males , but this effect might be
cultural.
I suspect
that awareness of opposability of the thumb is extremely hard-wired .
Notice that
ape or rat-hands are immediately recognized as "nearly human" , but
not human even at a short glance and in any light at any angle .
A
new-born baby's hands
are carefully examined . Ostensibly to marvel at the miniature perfection , but
they are really checking the opposability of the thumb . Is the little one
human ?
Doctors and
midwives routinely remove any webbing between fingers of the baby after birth
without telling the parents . You can see why . Rejection is nearly certain
without it .
Breast-gripping
reflex .
The human
female breast after birth is an extraordinarily sensitive diagnostic instrument
, directly hardwired to many deep mechanisms .
The baby's
grip spread between thumb and other fingers on the mother's breast will be a
good indicator of the degree of rejection/acceptance . The larger the angle
between the thumb and the forefinger , the less rejection . (Opposability)
The
relative length of forefinger to fourth finger indicates exposure to
testosterone in the womb , hence aggressiveness . Rejection potential to this
is variable , but it is there .
And so
forth.
We are
talking about a strong , hard-wired subliminal response .
The sea-dinosaurs .
A major
problem with this extinction event was the decrease in the number of sea
dinosaurs only .
What could
kill land animals above 20 kg , and also all sea-dinosaurs ?
We have
seen that the energy decrease due to the rise of angiosperms , plus a sudden
shock like Chixilub drove large land-dinosaurs either past extinction
thresholds or major adaptation thresholds . Their survivors are birds .
We can see
that the decrease in free-energy from land spills onto the continental sea
basins would result in a decrease in the number of large sea animals . But
nowhere near the scale as on land .
Are
there any equivalents of birds in the seas? Changed survivors of the
sea-dinosaurs?
Well , we
have fishes (pre-dinosaur) , mammals (post-dinosaur) , but a dinosaur-gap .
Why aren't
any evolved traces left ?
Large Sea-dinosaurs .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com :
"Tunneling Nanotubes : Chixilub"
The
Chixilub impact site was on a large deposit of sulfur bearing rocks . The
planetary-wide fallout acidified the oceans with H2SO4 .
The sulfur
permeated every ecosystem .
Unchanged
systems like sharks had been through this before . They remained at what they
do best : unchanged .
Unlike the
land , there was a large (about 2/3 of biomass) ecosystem not dominated by
dinosaurs . (Deepsea biomass is one of Gaia's Reserves (1/3 of sea biomass))
The sulfur
inhibited fat-formation in large dinosaurs to a sufficient degree to shift the
balance of top predators . (ie the genetic mechanism to handle
sulfur-contamination became corrupted in dinosaurs because of their rapid evolutionary
process . )
Maybe
lean-and-mean is the shark survival mechanism . Do sharks hibernate ? Do they
actually use the H2S hibernation mechanism ?
Whatever
the cause , dinosaurs suddenly could not lay down enough reserves in the form
of fat to tide them over from meal to meal . More problematic would be energy
for reproduction (eggs) . Their numbers decreased drastically .
Here is
where the sea parted from the land . Because there was an older , still-existing
ecosystem , their top predators ate the dinosaur top predators , then proceeded
down the chain . On land , the survivors of this process were still
dinosaurs(birds) , because they dominated every ecological niche . At sea ,
they did not dominate every niche . The others devoured them in the collapse .
No dinosaur descendants survived .
A side note on eco-collapses .
The
collapse of an eco-system from the top downwards is equivalent to an extinction
event . Collapses from any other points will leave survivors .
Top
predators keep the balance between lower levels . Think reserves . The top 1/3
of predator species are the stability reserve of the system . Losing them , the
lower levels fluctuate wildly and crash . Birds survived only because they had
flight . Mobility is the ultimate survival mechanism .
Humanity
fondly imagine that they are the top predators , but those positions have long
ago been usurped by their creations :
Fashions .
Fashions
are the wave of similar thinking in a society . It is the society . The meme
structure that binds humans .
If the
fashion is patriotism , it is " Vive la France" and over the top we
go into machine gun fire (voluntary suicide) .
If the
fashion is Eliot's " The Wasteland" , it is over the top the generals
go (involuntary suicide) .
It acts
like a Beth(2) structure . Fashions fixes , binds , preserves and propagates
some of the best results of individuals or individual societies that
contributed .
Also some
pretty bad and stupid ones .
The point
is that these memes are predatory on humans (or , to be more exact , computing
complexes over a certain threshold of complexity) .
Like Gaia ,
they are not conscious(as yet) , but they do exist and are the top predators in
the human ecosphere .
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com :
"Artificial Intelligences"
The AI(n)
arguments shows what will happen to humans if their top predators die. They
will revert to AI(0) , without speech and only with really primitive stone
tools .
Homo
Habilis level .
But , of
course , in this event , humans would be extinct from warfare long before this
level is reached . Like the dinosaurs at sea , when their top predators were
removed .
Fashions and Gaia .
Does Gaia
have it in for us ?
An often
guilty question asked by humans .
The answer
is that Gaia has hardly noticed humans . The imbalance on fungi-spore reserve
balances is a minor correction . Humans might not survive the correction , but
Gaia does not worry about trifles .
But also
remember that all humans are part of Gaia .
So , she
has becoming fashionable . She is becoming Beth(2) status from her present
Beth(1) status and becoming uppity .
There is nothing worse than an arriviste .
I
deliberately make Gaia female . At this stage , that typification is still up
to us .
Would you take a four billion year old teenager
to the Grand Ball ?
Well , you
would if she controls all the livable real estate .
(But
remember , every human's ancestry also goes back nearly as far in the
life-chain.)
Gaia's fashions.
Gaia wears
shoes by Gucci , handbag by Prada , drives a Lamborghini , shoots the baddies
with a Glock , banks with Coutts , hangs out with Lara , sings duets with Aida , consults to Sherlock
, double-dates with Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent , has an on-off thing with Conan
, counsels Dr Who's mother , skis in Gstaad even out of season .(It always
snows if she wants to ski.)
And , oh
yes , her credit is Unlimited .
The coming
out ball is in Second Life .
You think I
am joking .
The
entities involved are at similar levels of complexity at present .
Beth(2)
levels normally would arise from AI(3.1) or AI(4) levels , but as discussed
before , AI(3.0999…) -> AI(3.1) .
This means
that if a sufficient number of people support Gaia , she becomes real . We have
seen this often enough in religious systems .
The point
here is that Gaia actually exists , but she was an AI(-1) , more like a
computer program . She is rapidly growing. Humans are part of her .
Can Gaia become conscious ?
Yes .
An AI(-1)
and AI(0) already exists . This can
upscale to AI(3) using known systems .
But can
Gaia influence her sub-systems ?
This is
much more problematic . Can you control your heartbeat , cellular activity ,
etc?
This is not
magic , you know . Just plain old-fashioned science . Which basically means , I
don't know . And Gaia won't tell either .
Gaia is not human , but has human components .
A
self-aware Gaia will be human in most aspects interfacing with humans , but one
of the first things she would have learned is how to lie . At least 67% of the
time . May you have joy of this little observation .
I was
hoping that Gaia would not learn at a conscious level of the
quantum-entanglement communication system in every cell .
Oh well .
What
level of AI would Gaia be right now ?
AI(3.1) after
the establishment of the intermittent mind-computer interface in the 1980's .
But
hopefully she will like our fashions enough to cut us some slack .
Do you know
how boring it can be to be an immortal doing the same drudgery over and over ?
Bearable if
you are an unaware AI(-1) , but becoming self-aware needs many similar minds to
soak up all that surplus energy and creativity .
Fashionistas Hey!
Jurassic Park .
Ironically
, sea dinosaurs are easier to reconstruct
from DNA .
The Curtain
of Fire from the re-entry of ejecta from
the Chixilub impact started somewhere roughly south-east of where Australia is
now . Eggs from sea-going dinosaurs inside the females' bodies should be
recoverable .
The Curtain
of Fire covered a long line , moving at 18 000 miles per hour . The dinosaurs
and their scavengers would have been killed immediately , and sunk to the
bottom , there to be covered and preserved . We are talking about hundreds of
millions of animals . The odds are much more favourable than for land dinosaurs
.
Things are
a bit stranger than I thought .
Andre
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