#why you wouldn't survive if dinosaurs were still alive

[altered-and-broken]

Maybe listen to Cuda BEFORE TRYING TO STAB A LITERAL BEAST? He knows Prism more than you all and managed to calm her down ᵇᵘᵗ ˢᶜᵃˡᵉⁿᵉ ʰᵃᵈ ᵗᵒ ʳᵘⁱⁿ ⁱᵗ⁻ SO YEAAAHH…..

The serpent is still frantically trying to talk down the beast, but at this point, it's clear she's not having any of it...

"Prism!! Please just- listen to me!!!

Stop this! These shapes do not want to hurt you!!"

He only gets a growl in response, as she continues to bite down on the supposed "Guardian" of the shapes.

"Stop! Don't do this!!"

"I know you're mad! And I know you're hurting because of him!!

But these other shapes are NOT at fault!! They do NOT want to hurt you!!"

The snake stuggles, trying to keep the large dinosaur still, even for a moment.

"Just stop moving! Please!!

I promise I'll help you, it'll all be okay, but stop moving! You're losing a lot of blood, and it's getting to you!!

You'll die if you continue doing this!!!"

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Why So Serious? This is a Dinosaur Blog?

So we live in a world that has built its entire mythology off of hierarchies. The idea that the rich are better than the poor. The whites better than people of color. Men better than women. Able-bodied and able-minded better than the disabled and neurodivergent. Straight, cis folk better than queers. christians better than any other people of any other religion. That's the society we in "western" places live in. Another fundamental component of that is that humans are better, more important, more "evolved" or "chosen" than any other living thing.

and that is just as false as all the rest of them.

you can't dismantle it without dismantling the others first, of course. since humano-supremacy is the one the rest is built off of, you won't properly unlearn it unless you unlearn white supremacy first. that's why we see countless vegans being real racist pieces of shit all the time.

but you do have to unlearn anthropocentrism, too. you do. because the biosphere is all fundamentally equal. we are one part of nature, of the ecosystem, connected to all the rest. we are partners in the evolution of life. understanding that is necessary: to combat climate change, to fight against ecofascism, to ensure the survival of our species and the world. we are not uniquely evil or uniquely good. we're just some naked apes that made a bunch of mistakes, but we can fix them, too.

I live with five parrots. every day they remind me that the idea humans are "more evolved" is ridiculous. they understand things I would never expect. and they remind me that they're dinosaurs every damn day. and that's just another type of tetrapod, something so close to us its easy to empathize with them. Now apply it to fungi. It gets harder, right?

But that's why we have to keep working.

And that's why we have to see the history of life not just as an interesting story, but the story of us. The history of all of us. and it explains so much! The quirks of geology lead to the geography of slavery in the united states. Humans wouldn't have even evolved if a rock hadn't randomly hit the planet at the right time. We have hiccups because we descend from fish. The list goes on.

We need to produce a human population that thinks ecologically and evolutionarily, so that we can tackle the real problems and move forward.

And that's why I'm so gd-damned serious about dinosaurs. Because dinosaurs, in that western mythos, are the "lumbering, dumb lizards" that went extinct because they sucked, so the cool mammals could come in and run the show - and we, the coolest mammals of all, took our rightful place as the leaders.

But that's not what happened.

Dinosaurs were well adapted for their environments, intelligent and active animals - and were thriving right until the end-Cretaceous. Nonavian ones only went extinct because of a giant space rock. And dinosaurs are STILL WITH US - as birds - and doing better than ever. There are more species of dinosaur alive today than there are mammals. and humans just kind of, happened, thanks to some lucky accidents. we are as much a product of random chance as the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs was.

All of our anthropocentric myths are just that - myths. frankly, how can we call ourselves "more evolved", when we're destroying the planet - gleefully and rapidly? We have to unlearn this myth.

And, in between crying about my thesis, I will do everything I can to help people unlearn that myth and see the true beauty that is the history of life.

so, yeah. come learn with me. it's the only way to liberate us all.

[leviathanverse]

Chapter 25: Genya and Salami?

Your heart raced, breathing sharp and short as you inhaled, vision blurred and skin tingling.

A panic attack. You knew by just the symptoms alone. You couldn't calm down. It was almost impossible. Almost.

You looked up, staggering as you tried to get up, the walls around you a dark grey with computers. A security office... help... You could get help!

But first, you had to get over the panic attack. It wouldn't do much good to still have a panic attack while calling for help.

It would make it sound like you are saying farewell to the ones who are supposed to rescue you... you...

Your head went blank as you only thought about yourself. It didn't feel right. You didn't need to escape, you were sort of useless. But Tanjiro... everyone-!

They needed to get of of the island the most. It didn't matter if you were going to die or survive.

Their lives mattered more than yours.

" Y/n!"

You looked at the cameras, and saw Tanjiro with Zinetsu look t one of the many cameras. Your panic attack called down.

" Y/n?! Can you see us?!"

You quickly got up and pressed a button, activating the speakers and intercoms all around the park.

" Y-yeah! I can see you!"

" Do you know where we have to turn to get to the docks?"

You looked at all the cameras, and saw something very promising.

" Yeah, I think so."

" Can you lead us?"

You nodded, before remembering that they were on the screen and not there in person in front of you.

" Take a right, then go straight. You'll be able to go to the docks."

You saw them nod. It was nice to see them again. Especially Zika, Inosuke and... you sighed.

" Douma. Of course. Who did I expect? Genya?"

As if his name was a summoning spell, said man appeared in one of the cameras. Your jaw dropped.

" How the fuck d- WHERE DID HE COME FROM?!"

Your brain tried to process how he was still alive- no. How he was STILL on this island. Didn't everyone evacuate? Why was he still here? Many questions formed, to which you didn't have the answer to.

You swallowed thickly, and pressed the button.

" Genya?"

" WHO- WHERE?!"

" I am in the Control Centre. Well- in one of the tunnels of said Control Centre."

" Y/n? Can you please tell me what is going on?"

You swallowed, unsure of how to tell him that everyone evacuated the island due to a rogue hybrid dinosaur roaming the island.

" Um... did you not hear the alarms?"

You questioned, and were surprised by his answer.

" No. I only woke up underground with my brother. We just woke up from our nap."

" ... The island evacuated because of the Indominus Rex, or I-rex for short."

He stayed silent.

" What?!"

" Genya? Who are y- the fuck is the camera doing?"

SALAMI?! Oh great. Now you had to not only deal with dinosaurs, but now Salami's bullshit. Could this da- nope. You weren't going to jinx it.

" Hello, Mr. Shinigazawa"

He went quiet as he stared at the camera. His expression was unreadable, blank. It was... creepy.

" It is me, Y/n. The new worker?"

" I remember you as clear as day."

His tone...

" I can help everyone get off of this island by guiding them to the docks. There are emergency boats there at the docks."

He sighed, before looking at Genya. He didn't utter a word before returning his attention back to the camera. You swore that he stared in your soul...

But he wasn't staring into your soul. It was Fate controlling the I-rex behind them that stared into your soul. The dinosaur, controlled by Fate, stared at the two humans. It wasn't going to hunt them. No, not yet. It was too soon.

Previous <-•-> Next

[balanceoflightanddark]

Creationism and Early Paleontology

It should come to no surprise to anyone that the field of paleontology has more often than not rubbed shoulders with Creationism, or the belief that the development of species like mankind had divine intervention as opposed to natural selection and evolution. I'm not gonna really go too into detail on Creationism since this isn't really about debunking it (especially since I am a devout Roman Catholic).

It's more about a time in the history of paleontology when Creationism was a widely accepted belief and how it impacted the very beginning of the field.

For hundreds of years, Creationism was THE dominant belief that everything in existence was created to be perfect by God and the world and species themselves were unchanging. Why change what is already perfect after all. George Cuvier would be the first to challenge that assumption, contending that some species could in fact go extinct for one reason or another. To support this claim, he cited fossils of elephants that once lived in Europe as a different species that would've been easy to find if they were still alive. This species would later become known as the Wooly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) by today's paleontologists.

At the time, the ideas of extinction and deep time was practically unheard of, so it was inevitable that details wouldn't exactly age too well with so little evidence to go on. For example, the biblical flood from the story of Noah was often used as an explanation for why fossils from seemingly different parts of the world would end up in places they shouldn't be. In 1821 for instance, Reverend William Buckland examined hyena fossils that were discovered in Kirkdale Cave, England.

Rather than assume that they belonged to an extinct species of hyena, Buckland believed that the bones were washed to Europe by the Flood, citing their shallow deposition within the cave as proof.

Buckland would later go on to describe Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur ever to be described.

It wasn't until around 1859 with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species that the rift between paleontology and Creationism began to form. Darwin argued that, rather than species being made perfect, they evolved to best survive in their environment over a gradual period of time. He often cited fossils of South American prehistoric mammals about how various species changed over time. Naturally he got in hot water with the Church for his radical ideas.

It's here where dinosaurs would find themselves in the middle of this controversy. Archeopteryx was discovered in 1861, just two years after Darwin published his book, and was often used as a missing link between birds and reptiles. While Darwin himself never studied Archeopteryx, he did remark its existence proved that we had a lot to learn about the denizens of the prehistoric past.

Perhaps the most outstanding example was the widespread belief in the early 20th century that dinosaurs may still exist in some parts of the world. The idea was that since the Earth was believed to have been only a few thousand years old, then chances were there might be living relics somewhere in the unexplored wilderness. In particular the Congo and South America. One of the most notable instances was an account by Percy Fawcett, the famous explorer that went missing for the lost city of Z, remarked on an early expedition in 1906 that he had seen:

“an animal he believed might be Diplodocus, the eighty-foot reptile of twenty-five tons. This animal he though might still be in existence as it was an eater of aquatic plants, which grow profusely in this region. The Diplodocus story is confirmed by many of the tribes east of the Ucayali”.

Obviously, there's a decent chance he may have fabricated these stories as many explorers did, but there was a real effort to find living dinosaurs at the dawn of the 20th century. A concept that was used for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's best selling novel, The Lost World, who directly based the accounts of dinosaurs off of Fawcett's stories.

Nowadays, living dinosaurs is only widely believed by those that adhere to the Creationist theory, along with the belief that the earth was young. But it's important to remember that there was a time that these ideas weren't considered pseudoscience, but practical fact and seriously considered by scientists. It was a fascinating period where knowledge of paleontology was still very young, and how some things that would seem like fiction or farcical were taken seriously. And a reminder of how much time has passed since then and how much information has rewritten how we view the ancient world.

[quillsink]

OKAY SO

living fosil is a term used to describe an animal, plant, whatever which seemingly hasn't evolved. If you looked at the fossil record and found fossils for example, horseshoe crabs, you would see that horseshoe crabs from then are the same as the horseshoe crabs from now, in other words, it wouldn't look like they evolved. they look the same as the fossils, hence the name- living fossil!

other examples of these creatures include; Ginko leaves, crocodiles, sharks, triops and coelacants (i love coelacants and i have an entire other infodump in my brain about them).

theres a LOT of misinformation about these animals that is used to promote bs theories such as the creationist theory (the theory that the earth is 6,000 years old, that god created Earth form nothing, that evolution doesn't exist and that humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs) and cryptozoology (the search for cryptids such as the lochness monster that obviously aren't true (seperate infodump about that))

of course, these theories are bogus. An argument said by professionals is "if the dinosaurs truly survived for that long after the Cretaceous period, we would have found their bones alongside human bones and they would have looked like nothing in the past if they existed now because of the changes in climate and other factors that would have led to them not being adept to survive and thus to evolution. also dinosaurs are FUCKING huge im pretty sure we would have found them by now.". the counter argument made by believers in the previously mentioned bogus theories is "Ceolecants lived alongside dinosaurs, that can be found in the fossil record and they haven't evolved. they were thought to have been extinct after the Cretaceous period and there were none of them in the fossil record and yet we have found them today, same as in the past. CLEARLY, dinosaurs are still alive somewhere."

it's always "Coelacants HAVENT EVOLVED! living fossils DISPROVE EVOLUTION!" when in reality, if anything living fossils prove evolution.

i'm gonna use the horseshoe crab as an example. an inexperienced and not professional, like the idiot that is writting this, would look at the fossil and at the living creature and determinain they look exactly the same, that they haven't evolved. BUT, if you are a professional horseshoe crab person, you would see that a little tiny bit of their exoskeleton has changed. Just like one tiny hole. has changed size. so they aren't the same- they have evolved, just way slower then the usual.

An animal evolves when the habitiat around it evolves. if a lizards habitat goes from full of fruit to no fruit because of climate changes, that lizard will either die out or evolve to eat other things. if an animal such as a horseshoe crab lives deep, deep, underwater in a habitat that practically never changes, why would it evolve? if it aint broken don't fix it yk. Of course, with genetics and all of that, there is really not a way for an animal to not evolve, they will always evolve, just at a way slower pace.

the term living fossil is being debated in the archaeological community because it makes it seem like some creatures haven't evolved, when they did just again, really. fuckin. slow. living fossils are used by creationists and cryptozoologists completely out of context and never correctly. the term stibliomorph is being proposed as a candidate for replacing the term livong fossil, because it more accurately describes what these creatures are- lil shits that evolve at the pace of a snail.

and THAT is why i as so many others interested in this field think that stibliomorph should be used in place of livong fosil. thank you for coming to my ted talk lmao.

holy shit bro that’s really cool!! I learned a lot and that’s really interesting ajshajdjd please infodump more I love this