Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 5, 2013 6:09:12 GMT 10
This item is seriously interesting, imho, not so much for its palaeo curiosity but because it has direct relevance to SETI.
Briefly, here's a dude reckons he has evidence that during the Triassic Period in Earth's deep past there were cephalopods that were not only large and strong enough to prey upon Ichthyosaurs but they were intelligent. His evidence is that these presumed giant squid arranged the bones of their victims in pleasing geometric patterns as decoration around their dens.
Sounds pretty far out? Well, modern octopus do likewise, arranging shells and leftovers around their own dens as camouflage. The crucial difference in the case of these Triassic monsters is geometry: modern cephalopds just paste their bits'n'pieces around the den randomly. What this fellow describes is more your geometrically patterned suburban garden path, presumably leading visitors to squidy's front door. Only the designs are made not from terra-cotta tiles but from the bones of killed ichthyosaurs.
I remember logging this one some years ago when he first reported such a find. The whole idea of prehistoric intelligent non-human races on the Earth was, and still is, vigorously disputed.
Only now he's turned up a second case. Hmmm. What's the old adage? "One is a fluke, two is a trend."
So where's the SETI connexion? We've all heard of the Fermi Paradox: if life is common throughout the Universe and if technological intelligence arises inevitably then why do we hear no radio signals from galactic civilisations? Where is everybody?
One possible answer is that technological intelligence is rare, so rare that it only ever appeared on the Earth once. Sure, dolphins and some birds are pretty smart but they can't manufacture things the way humans do. What if we now have an instance of Mesozoic creatures who were able to make things themselves and who appreciated the elegance of line and form and geometry? In other words, beings who comprehended their world?
They would be a second example of intelligence arising on the Earth and, if verified, it can only mean that intelligence is not so rare after all. The mystery of the Fermi Paradox deepens.
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Post by molloch on Nov 5, 2013 9:50:51 GMT 10
Take a look at the fossilised "beak: I think this guy and Rex might could on a similar wavelength. Once is a fluke, twice could be a syndrome.
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 5, 2013 10:26:53 GMT 10
Hell, yeah. Could be a syndrome .. could be. It's not as if we're unacquainted on this forum with manic syndromes concerning all sorts of things. Cryptic critters, uh, global warming .. to name but two. On the other hand, maybe let's withhold judgment for a while? Perhaps lucky number 3 will come in? I feel a certain sympathy with the dude because I myself have been laughed at roundly merely for inquiring upon the possibility of intelligent dinosaurs. I thought it was a reasonable question but the experts thought not. I mean, consider a dinosaur's anatomy: bipedal, some with large brains, binocular vision in some species, two arms dangling free, some with "hands" that appear capable of manipulating small objects. Evolution of technological ability in a line of creatures with those attributes is not completely out of the question, surely? There's us as Exhibit #A ...
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Post by molloch on Nov 5, 2013 11:58:14 GMT 10
The idea of intelligent dinosaurs is not too far out there, even scientists as mainstream as Richard Dawkins have discussed the idea before, but it isn't widely accepted - mainly because it is purely hypothetical. scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/11/11/richard-dawkins-smart-dinosaurs/Seeing a pattern in some Ichthyosaur vertebra and interpreting it as a giant, intelligent mollusc, requires quite a jump. I can see, superficially, how it is easy to equate this kind of leap with what Palaeos and other scientists actually do, because to the uniformed, these are just all interpretations of the same evidence, and this board is a classic example of that kind of thinking, as you have alluded to, above. The difference is the framework that these ideas are interpreted in. There is no evidence of "Kraken" arranging Ichthyosaur bones in regular patterns, this is an armchair interpretation of seeing a pattern in bones laying on a surface. Vertebral columns are already in this pattern in real life, and while it is somewhat odd for them to fall left and right like in the image in that article, jumping to the conclusion that a unknown, intelligent cephalopod did it is kind of crazy. It would be like going into a cave, seeing that most of the limb bones lay in basically the same direction, and interpreting it as Thylacoleo arranging bones to point the way to the exit of the cave. I could then find evidence for this, the bones generally do point toward the entrance, they lay along passages, many bones from the different species all point the same way, both hind and forelimbs are arranged together. This must be evidence of an intelligent Diprotodontoid?? Without an understanding of taphonomy, this seems reasonable, but in fact the direction and accumulation of limb bones in caves is due to the movement of water, which orients bones in the direction of the flow. Can we prove a Thylacoleo didn't do this? No - but it does seem rather unlikely given that we understand the mechanism by which it can occur, we can recreate the conditions experimentally and observe the same effect, and we have no other supporting evidence that Thylacoleo could perform this kind of intelligent reasoning. Occam's razor.
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 5, 2013 14:29:05 GMT 10
I agree with all that you say entirely, Molloch. Except, I have trouble imagining who you could possibly have in mind viz-a-viz a "certain type of thinking" .. I hadn't read that article from tet. zoo. Interesting. The hunter-gather tailless dino is quite ridiculous, of course. The bone arrangements cited in the squids' case are very curious but, as you say, they don't prove a thing. Nor are they likely to: not unless the next group are set out, perhaps, in a tessellated pattern of 3:4:5 right angled triangles. Now that would require some explaining. One difficulty is that there is a spectrum of mental abilities among animals: parrots and corvids rate very highly, as Tet Zoo mentions. What one would have to insist upon is evidence of material culture before one accepted the idea of a long-extinct intelligent race upon the Earth. However, in defining "material culture" one would unfortunately have to disqualify curious arrangements of stones or bones. As you point out, natural agencies like water can generate non-random patterns that may deceive the unwary. Moreover, animals themselves move objects about in ways that mimic intelligent forethought. When those dinosaur nest arrangements in Mongolia(?) were first reported, one might easily have thought, "Aha! Circular arrangements of stones made by dinosaurs? Obviously a Cretaceous dinosaur village and these are the foundation stones for their huts." Unfortunately, the circles, as you'd well know, turned out to be nests for their eggs, scraped together in the same way ground-living birds do. One can guess that a fossil penguin rookery would likewise leave circles of pebbles for some future palaeontologist to puzzle over. But there is no penguin "civilisation" in Antarctica. The thing one would have to insist upon is evidence of intentional manufacture. If, for example, Acheulean-style hand axes were to turn up in Cretaceous rocks, certified and documented as no hoax, Occam's Razor would probably allow only one explanation. The difference between manufacture and mere construction is that the former requires multi-step mental processes with imaginative visualisation of the end-product. An example: attempts have been made to teach apes how to knap rocks so as to make stone tools in the manner of our early ancestors. But they can't do it and it's not a question of their manual dexterity. Not even a "genius level" chimp can mentally visualise the finished object in the raw stone. In stark contrast any human child can envisage the finished model when playing with unformed plasticine. So, while the idea of intelligence arising on the Earth in a remote former age is highly intriguing, the minimal evidence required to prove it would be some sort of artifact showing unambiguous signs of goal-oriented manufacture, I would say. Tools employed by animals --> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals
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Post by molloch on Nov 5, 2013 16:06:00 GMT 10
When I read the first Kraken article some time ago, I immediately though of Intelligent Design advocates doing the exact same thing. Looking at patterns in DNA, or in morphology and coming to the conclusion that there had to be a designer behind the process. The guy researching this makes the same mistake - starting with a premise then looking for things to fit with it. When you do this, you are driving your research by narrative, rather than evidence. It isn't science, it is story telling.
McMenamin has a bit of a history of unsupported narrative, have a look on Wikipedia at a few of his previous claims.
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Post by mingle on Nov 5, 2013 23:02:56 GMT 10
If life is common throughout the Universe and if technological intelligence arises inevitably then why do we hear no radio signals from galactic civilisations? If you look at how far our own radio-waves have travelled into OUR galaxy in the past 107-odd years, it's not that surprising... www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.htmlCheers, Mike.
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Post by johannes on Nov 6, 2013 0:05:09 GMT 10
Intelligent dinosaurs are a fact of life. I saw a ground hornbill in Munich zoo making himself a ball from straw and using it as a toy. However, higher intelligence in theropods seems to be restricted to cenozoic, neognath clades like parrots, corvids and hornbills. Hence higher inteligence in theropods might be restricted to grass-based, high energy ecosystems, that supposedly* did not yet exist in the mesozoic. There is no positive evidence of mesozoic theropods, avian or non-avian, being more intelligent than an ostrich or a tinamou, but there is no positive evidence that they couldn't reach higher levels of intelligence, either. The Russell-Seguin dinosauroid is, of course, just plain horrible bad science. No terrestrial theropod ever adopted a bolt-upright stance (and the upright posture of aquatic ones like auks and penguins is basically an illusion created by very short tails and legs set well back on the body), and why on earth should an animal already excellently cooled by an extensive air sac system loose all its integument? Especially if you consider the fact that the ear anatomy of troodontids was highly convergent to owls, wich means they probably needed an owl-like facial veil for proper hearing? And why is a diapsid - which by definition lacks the gland-rich skin of synapsids or lissamphibians - portrayed as being slimy? How could the sickle-claw re-evolve into a conventional toe? For a credible dinosauroid, look at Nemo Ramjets work linked in the Tet Zoo article. BTW, why is all speculation about intelligent non-avian theropods restricted on troodontids? This seems to be a meme essentially perpetuated by popular cultur, but without scientific foundation. Wouldn't oviraptorids - who share adaptions for crushing hard, but energy-rich food with parrots and humans - make much better candidates for sapience?
Coming back to the topic of Triassic maccaroni art (as Brian Switek has called it), as Debbie has pointed out in her comment above, making complex structures isn't necessarily a sign of sapience; Bower birds build impressive structures, corvids don't, in spite of being far more intelligent. Termites build quite impressive structures, too, and they aren't very intelligent either, not even by arthropod standards.
*but what were gondwanatheres and Nigersaurus eating?
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Post by vincent on Nov 6, 2013 1:16:44 GMT 10
Here's a couple of thoughts: Some birds make very complex nests and courting bowers, and bees are very good with hexagons; does that make them intelligent? Perhaps that bony arrangement was some sort of invitation to the local lady squids telling them that this fellow is so healthy that he can bring down some big prey. Why discount the octopus with the random arrangement of shells and debris? How do we know that octopusses (octopi?) aren't all brilliantly creative, eight-armed Jackson Pollocks? This one was created by Pollock: This one was created by an octopus:
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Thylacoleo Gal
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 7, 2013 9:34:41 GMT 10
Why discount the octopus with the random arrangement of shells and debris? How do know that octopusses (octopi?) aren't all brilliantly creative, eight-armed Jackson Pollocks? We may well suspect that some modern artists have brains like molluscs' ...
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 7, 2013 9:43:56 GMT 10
Intelligent dinosaurs are a fact of life. I saw a ground hornbill in Munich zoo making himself a ball from straw and using it as a toy. However, higher intelligence in theropods seems to be restricted to cenozoic, neognath clades like parrots, corvids and hornbills. .... That's a point, J. How would one distinguish between the works of an admittedly smart parrot or corvid and some creature that was genuinely technologically capable? We consider ourselves to be the sole example of technological civilisation in Earth's 4 billion year history but that's merely an assumption based on absence of evidence to the contrary.
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Nov 7, 2013 9:52:36 GMT 10
When I read the first Kraken article some time ago, I immediately though of Intelligent Design advocates doing the exact same thing. Looking at patterns in DNA ... Your sense of timing is well honed, Molloch -->
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Post by johannes on Nov 8, 2013 1:28:43 GMT 10
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Post by dennisw on Nov 8, 2013 12:41:32 GMT 10
Any repetitive action can lead to patterns as fractal equations so adequately demonstrate, IMHO patterns cannot be construed as proof of anything other than mathematical sequences.
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Post by johannes on Dec 5, 2013 0:53:57 GMT 10
We may well suspect that some modern artists have brains like molluscs' ...
Cephalopod's arms can act quite autonomously, independent of the central brain, quite a few people in the media and cultural industry think with their appendages, too blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2013/11/30/tool-use-in-crocs-and-gators/2 of 24 surviving crurotarsan species use tools. A two- or three-digit number of avian species (parrots, corvids, hornbills, gulls, herons)uses tools. There were thousands of non-avian dinosaur species. Now do the math...
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Post by mick on Dec 7, 2013 12:46:08 GMT 10
*Intelligent dinosaurs are a fact of life."
Really,i was never aware of that - I thought they'ed died out millions of years ago.
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Dec 8, 2013 13:50:27 GMT 10
*Intelligent dinosaurs are a fact of life." Really,i was never aware of that - I thought they'ed died out millions of years ago. I believe the ones still alive these days are called "birds".
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Post by johannes on Jan 7, 2014 23:03:17 GMT 10
Alan Feduccia dropped by to make a comment Back to serious: BANDIT theories that birds aren't dinosaurs, but flying prolacertids, crocs, Doswellias or whatever ran or crawled around in the Triassic and was halfway diapsid make about as much sense as Sera's idea that elephants, walruses and desmotylians were not mammals but late surviving dicynodonts (I suggest the name obesotuskotheria for this clade ). In fact, Sera made more sense: Dicynodonts and obese, tusked mammals are at least all therapsids. Longisquama, as one of the BANDITs favourite "protobirds", is not even an archosaur .
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Jan 8, 2014 20:20:44 GMT 10
Plezio! As Victoria's chief spokesman for Cretaceous palaeontology, would you care to translate the learned Johannes for us?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2014 22:43:46 GMT 10
Sorry I can't offer any advance on Johannes' customarily learned contribution, except to report that we now know something about the colour of some Mesozoic sea creatures. Preserved pigment in fossilized skin from a leatherback turtle, a mosasaur and an ichthyosaur suggests that these animals were, at least partially, dark-colored in life -- an example of convergent evolution. Note that the leatherback turtle and mosasaur have a dark back and light belly (a color scheme also known as countershading), whereas the ichthyosaur, similar to the modern deep-diving sperm whale, is uniformly dark-colored. (Credit: Illustration by Stefan Sølberg) www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=137891&CultureCode=en
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Post by johannes on Jan 16, 2014 19:46:43 GMT 10
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Jan 20, 2014 9:31:05 GMT 10
Very cool, J! But, um ... Hamburg Chicken?
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Post by johannes on Jan 21, 2014 2:45:55 GMT 10
Thylacoleo_Gal wrote: But, um ... Hamburg Chicken? Well, why not? Ecologically, Anchi, at 110g, was perhaps closer to a quail or small partridge , and probably more arboreal than the mostly ground-dwelling chooks, but both are/were smallish, omnivorous theropods and halfway capable, but reluctant, flyers. IMHO, the chicken comparision makes more sense for a primitive troodontid (more derived nocturnal hunters or herbivores might be another matter) than the usual depictions of troodontids as mega-predators making suicide attacks on elephant-sized ornithischians*; or as slimy, naked, green, bolt upright Russell-Seguin lizardmen. * fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/068/d/e/Breaking_the_Curse_II_by_Albertonykus.jpg Image belongs to Albertonykus
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Jan 21, 2014 5:53:03 GMT 10
In that case, considering what we now know about dinosaurs' attractively coloured plumage, I guess the little'uns would be more akin to your brightly coloured bantams or wyandottes than your plain white, boring leghorns?
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Post by johannes on Jan 23, 2014 0:24:06 GMT 10
Thylacoleo_Gal wrote: L. Beverly Halstead went for the plain vanilla Leghorn look on the cover of this: 4.bp.blogspot.com/-UDNLYfkQIrI/T57wHt5HKxI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/C6CNGHbC-lc/s400/Cover.jpgbut then Beverly also thought that cladistics would turn your children into Marxists, and that Megalosaurus should be renamed Scrotum humanum The book also claims that sauropods were glorified rauisuchians, which would make them crocs rather than dinosaurs, but that might actually have been considered a viable scientific hypothesis in the disco era...
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Post by Thylacoleo Gal on Jan 24, 2014 8:47:27 GMT 10
The cover pic gives them rather snarly looking facial expressions ..
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Post by johannes on Feb 17, 2015 1:42:46 GMT 10
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Post by johannes on Mar 14, 2015 1:48:33 GMT 10
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Post by Ian Thomas on Mar 14, 2015 20:13:52 GMT 10
Shows they get sick of sick of fish all the time
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Post by johannes on Mar 24, 2015 21:37:37 GMT 10
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