Climate change may be worse than we think

Trollbait may find dismay with first sentence of:

first mammals emerged

As he correctly pointed out, mammalian 'stem' arose much earlier and persisted by way of vastly reduced 'expectations' during dino times.

Perhaps analogously, (some) dinosaurs persist as birds now. But we are rarely afraid of seeing them in our rear-view mirrors. As Thanksgiving approaches I never tire of describing it as a dinosaur dinner. I'll take my -1 from Trollbait for that.

 

why do you do that?

 

I'm currently reading a whodunit "The Dinosaur Feather" (by S.J. Gazan, and translated from Danish by Charlatte Barslund). A lot of it's over my head (well most), but I'm happy to tag along. And this November National Geographic had me checking the front cover to verify it wasn't an April issue:

 

Pterodactyl was a heckuva thing regardless of its relationship with birds of a current feather. In general dino-times featured biology going 'out there' in most flamboyant ways.

By contrast, now, after the fall (meaning Chicxulub and volcanic traps), mammals are a bit boring. Yeah we have giraffes and blue whales and bee hummingbirds, but c'mon...

It is plants that have really blown it open in the past 60 million along with their insect fellow travelers.

Beyond that, one of the tool-using species extended fire from dried bits to carbon taken out of holes in the ground. You know who I'm talkin' about. This has made a very big splash but it ought not limit our attention to other big splashes.

Earth is a large congenial stage upon which a series of Biological plays have already been performed. All related, but full of surprises. Drink it all in if you can find the time...

 

Yeah, even the prehistoric megafauna were mostly just bigger versions of what we have today.

Perhaps the energy requirement to be an endothermic homeotherm(warm blooded) makes wilder evolutionary experiments too risky. It does enforce lower population densities, which means fewer individuals to try experimenting with.

Well, with the warming, maybe some mammals will become more adventurous. Niches are opening up.

 

A shock, if you're not careful!