Out of date

[Greg Beetham]

I usually get a little bemused when someone uses ‘Dinosaurs’ in a derogatory fashion, let’s not forget that they ruled the land areas of the world for about a hundred and thirty five million years; you don’t stay top dog in the animal kingdom for that long without good reason. They only went extinct because of an event that not even they could survive, the same thing could happen to us anytime.

All of the other animal branches other than Dinosaurs (Turtles, Snakes, Lizards, Crocodiles, Mammal types etc.) were not able to do anything at all about their supremacy, the only places they didn’t rule was in the ocean (Plesiosaurs are not Dinosaurs) and the sky, although they had developed primitive flight (Archaeopteryx for one example) before the great extinction event.

Our ancestral mammal types lived under a rock the whole time, only coming out at night for a quick forage, the life expectancy for daylight foraging would have been measured in seconds.
They know this because mammal types lost colour vision during the enormous period of time living in the dark, it was only after the Dinosaurs went extinct that mammal types could come out in the daylight…eventually diversifying and evolving and regaining colour vision again, where today 60 million years after the Dinosaurs disappeared some mammals including us have recovered quite a deal of colour but still not as much as birds can see.

The birds diverged from Theropod Dinosaurs which didn’t hide under a rock for a hundred million years so they still have the full colour spectrum that we see, and more besides. For example birds in general have 4 different colour cones whereas we only have 3.
Besides having eyes that see more colour theirs are much more advanced for seeing critical detail, they can also see part of the UV spectrum, a bird of prey (raptor) can see the UV trail a prey rat leaves behind in the grass…no escape.
So really, labelling someone a Dinosaur is more of a compliment in some ways, I wish I had their eyesight; that would do me.
Greg

Ps Imagine a sickle clawed Dromaeosaurid equipped with that kind of vision, not one of those people hiding from one in the kitchen in the Jurassic Park movie would have lived to tell the tale, if it had been real of course. The Velociraptor wasn’t as big as depicted but Hollywood liked the name and so transferred it to another larger Dromaeosaurid.
How long would a Tiger or Lion last against any of the similar sized carnivorous Theropod dinosaurs? I think it’s hard to say, if the big cat was lucky enough to get a good throat hold it might win, but then the Dromaeosaurid’s had that slashing scimitar on their foot so the cat would have to maintain the hold and stay out of the way of that in order to survive, the inbuilt can opener/s would of course be a totally unexpected item.
If the Dromaeosaurid had reaction times equivalent or similar to that which birds have then I doubt the cat would stand much of a chance, those animals would have been refined in speed toughness and agility over millions of years of intense competition with others of their own kind, just to survive, if you were a smallish Dinosaur and you weren’t quick you improved the gene pool (faster than you could breed)…by being dead.

[Birma]

Love the analysis Greg - and a very good point! Hooray for dinosaurs I say

[Greg Beetham]

Thanks a lot Birma, appreciate that.
Greg

[bakubo]

When I was a kid I was fascinated with dinosaurs. I remember when I was 10 years old I went to the public library and checked out a college-level book about dinosaurs with lots of dense text and no color pictures, but I managed to read through the whole thing. Dinosaurs rule! Well, they used to rule.