• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Dinosaur Civilisation

I think a technological dinosaur civilisation would leave evidence in the form of what's missing rather than what you found.

Most of the coal we dig up in here in the UK and in Pennsylvania is Carboniferous (c380 million years ago) in age. If we assume that the hypothetical dinosaur civilisation which flourished 100 million years ago was broadly similar to our own in environmental destructiveness then we would expoect to find coal deposits which are mysteriously missing.
The same would probably apply to other minerals, eg metal ores.

Of course we may not simply have found the depleted deposits.
Or they could be hiding the truth from us.
 
Dino Civ

I think it's quite possible that at least one species of dinosaur did evolve into intelligent life...perhaps there's a connection between them and Icke's Reptilians, or between the reptile-gods, the Nagas, etc., of the past...? Remember, sixty-million years may be only eighteen letters long, but it's a vast, vast, vast ammount of time....more than enough time to lose ten thousand ciivilizations in...
 
You're all assuming that intelligence is a viable long-term survival trait when the verdict isn't in on that yet by a long chalk. If our species is still around 1 million years from now then maybe -just maybe- we can start thinking that intelligence possibly is a good survival trait, but it's still far too early to tell IMO. 5 million years of evolved intelligence and we can still be wiped off the map by the first decent sized global catastrophe to come along.

As for a dino civilization: as a dyed-in-the-wool misanthrope my guess is that we're the first time Mother Nature has experimented with intelligent species, and so far she probably ain't impressed: it isn't proving as good a trait as microscopic size and simple design, or giantism and loads of teeth, or simply small size and loads of legs. :)
 
I agree with Zygon, we are in no position to make a decision on wether or not intelligence is a good survival trait. So far all we seem to have done is take up more and more space, need more and more sustinace, and are eating away at this LITTLE planet of ours at an alarming rate! So far, not so good!

As for the dinosaurs, the fact that they managed to survive for a good number of millions of years is quite encouraging in the fact that they may have developed intelligence, but were smart enough to not start ripping away at the planet.
 
Harry Harrison's 'West of Eden' trilogy has New world humans (caveman-ish) v. Old world dinosaurs who use only 'biological' technology e.g. they don't build cities, they genetically modify and 'train' trees, 'vehicles' are large but fastmoving dinosaurs modified to respond to simple commands (and carry about 30 passengers), etc.
 
Hello All,

I'd be really interested to see what some of you think about this particular article I found at:

web.ukonline.co.uk/michael.magee/awwls/00/wls143.html
Link is dead; website is MIA. The cited article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2010011...line.co.uk/michael.magee/awwls/00/wls143.html

I realize something has been said on the subject of dinosaur civilizations here, but this article goes into more detail.

I would love to hear what your opinions are on Dr. Magee's theories.

P.S.
I would have reprinted the article here but I was afraid the moderators would find it too long.

EDIT:
Here is the opening section from the MIA webpage / article, illustrating the author's orientation to the subject.
Anthroposaurus Sapiens
Contents Updated: Monday, September 13, 1999

Ancient torch
Intelligent Dinosaurs?
Brain and Intelligence
Explosive Evolution?
Dale Russell and the Dinosauroid
A Model of the Possible
Primosaurs?
The Importance of Flowers
Cycles of Inundation
A Final Mystery
"The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations."
Intelligent Dinosaurs?

Did the dinosaurs develop intelligence before Adam?

T rex attacking Triceratops Some dinosaur iconoclasts have dared to ask this question, but even they have merely answered: They couldn"t have. Thus Bakker asks:

Why didn"t [the dinosaurs] evolve larger cerebral systems? Why didn"t they eventually produce super-intelligent species capable of making stone tools?
Desmond compares mammals with the superior dinosaurs and wonders:

Why did not "Man" land on the moon in the Cretaceous?
adding that by Man he meant a creature filling the ecological role of humans. Sagan asks

if the dinosaurs had not all been mysteriously extinguished some sixty-five million years ago, would the saurornithoides have continued to evolve into increasingly intelligent forms?
All believe dinosaurs would have reached intelligence were it not for the Cretaceous terminal extinction. And all agree that they failed to achieve it because they died out first.

I disagree.

Some dinosaurs did develop intelligence and by so doing caused the Cretaceous terminal extinction, just as an insensitive ape developed intelligence at the end of the Tertiary and created the mass extinction that marks the end of that geological era. Though the direct evidence is sparse—I give what little there is in the next chapter—the circumstantial evidence is compelling. The thesis is not self-evidently false, as, say, the idea of a flat earth is. Today we consider it evident that the earth is round and revolves round the Sun—but these ideas have only become accepted in the last few hundred years.

The movement of the continents, continental drift, noted by Wegener sixty years ago seems obvious to us all now, indeed it was probably obvious to any child studying a map of the world decades before Wegener, but because continents were so massive and the experts could not think of a mechanism by which they could move, no one was willing to ask the question must not South America and Africa once have been joined?

We might find ourselves realizing simultaneously that the anthroposaur preceded us, and that we have just stumbled over the precipice of our own extinction.

Mankind has adopted its position of global domination in just five million years. The dinosaurs, we have seen, were warm-blooded, active creatures and usurped the rule of the thecodonts in only five million years. Mechanisms exist for species to evolve at astonishingly fast rates. On average a species of dinosaur did not last for more than two or three million years before becoming extinct or evolving into a new species. There is no reason why one of the dinosaurs should not have evolved intelligence during the last five million years or so of the Cretaceous Period. ...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Bump!

A merging has occured :).

And right under Ryn's nose! And he didn't notice!! hee hee hee :D
 
The Anthroposaurus sapiens theory should not be considered without reference to Dr. Magee's other wild and wacky ideas; he is a christian fantasist, full of theories about the Essenes and New Testament.
Makes me wonder if the dinosaurs had become sapient, would the Messiah have visited them too? I'm sure C.S Lewis would have had something to say about this.

dunno what though...
 
Maybe elvolved shapeshifting dinosaurs still living amongst us.
 
Uhm, I place 20 bucks on a purchased "diploma mill" degree on that guy.

Some of the major things I noticed:

"If convergent evolution is anything to go by, perhaps the intelligent dinosaur had to descend, like the intelligent mammal, from the trees or, perhaps, emerge from the water."

Convergant evolution is the concept that an animal that occupies a specific ecological niche, will have similar characteristics as the it's equivalent in whatever ecology we're looking at. Or, in this case, that sometimes evolution will "duplicate" an animal, because of the specific requirements of it's niche.

This doesn't have anything to do with HOW they got that way though.

"Plainly, if the mammals were more intelligent than the dinosaurs then they should have been able to outwit them and usurp the dinosaur"s dominant status. They didn"t so they weren"t."

Nice logical phallacy, he didn't even try to hide it. He has serious problems with causality, as well.

Besides those specifics, he has a VERY anthropocentric view point when it suits his cause, and he totally abandons it when it doesn't.

As well, he seems to not realize that science cannot prove a negative. He repeatedly states "x says it is possible"... Well of course it is possible. Is it probable? Is it likely? Or is it a very, very unlikely?

Bah that is a half hour I'll never get back.
 
Humanoid Dinosaur Model

Since the link early in this thread doesn't seem to work, I have looked up another webpage and here it is:

Dinoman
Link and website are dead. No archived version available.
The content of the earlier (dead) webpage cited here has been salvaged and posted in that earlier post location.

I believe this is the same model on display at the Canadian Museum of Nature since the early 1980's. I have seen it as recently as the late 1990's.

It represents a very imaginative idea of what some of the smaller, faster, smarter dinosaurs might have evolved into if they hadn't gone extinct around 65,000,000 BP.

Notice the striking ressemblance to the Reptilian aliens of Alien Abduction and Right Wing Conspiracy lore. Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

Personally I am inclined to regard it as evidence that conspiracy-mongers have no imagination.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
can you imagine the nonhuman civilization in several million years time, with a bunch of them sitting round going:
"do you reckon, there was like, a mammal civilization once??"
"naaah man you've smoked too much.
 
What this research suggests is that the humanoid shape might be a natural form for a creature with a large brain.

The general body of the humans - two arms, two legs and a head on a relatively short neck - is no accident. It is the most logical arrangement for a big-brained land-dwelling creature.
Click to expand...

Um... doesn't a tree-dwelling past account for the humanoid form, especially the arms, hands and feet?
 
did a search on Dinosaur civilisations, and this was the first thing that came up for me. Read down until the middle of the page, where it gets superbly daft...

solan.co.uk/scotlandthehive/planetxorg.html
Link and webpage are dead / MIA. No archived version available.

As a native of Edinburgh, unreconstructed Scottish person and card-carrying whisky drinker, all I can say is 'well bugger me!'

Anyone for a game of cosmic golf?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Star Trek:- Voyager....did do an episode titled "Distant Origins" though, regarding a space faring Dinosaur culture.

But there again, what about "The Great Crab Civilisation", who took a great leap sidewards (not sure about the scuttles though or the claws on their hips)?.
 
Some amazing studies of bonobos knapping flints and cleverly using a stone-age tool set:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27852-bonobos-use-a-range-of-tools-like-stone-age-humans/

Chimps too have been observed making spears for hunting.

If some disaster were to wipe out humanity, it's certainly plausible that our hairy cousins in the ape world could evolve into a truly sapient species and achieve some sort of civilisation given another 10 million years or so, but dinosaurs? Nah, can't see that happening. In some 200 million years, they couldn't come up with anything with an encephalisation quotient bigger than today's chickens. Did a therapod ever sit on the brow of a hill and contemplate life, the universe and everything? I very much doubt it!
 
Love this:

steg.gif
 
We only have to look at today's examples to get a handle on this. Who can fail to be impressed by all the Crocodile cities and Alligator manufacturing industries we see around us today?
We've all grown used to seeing them speeding through our narrow streets on their Crococycles to get to their Crocohipster Coffee shops for a quick latte and a hen 'with the feathers still on'.
 
Some birds do make and use tools however, so simple tool use doesnt seem to be out even if it wasnt civilization.
 
I'd argue that with the timescales invoked even a moderately advanced race of dinosaurs would have left almost nothing that would have survived the millions of years for us to find. All we have from the dawn of mankind is a few crumbs of bone and chips of stone and that's barely one million years.
 
It all started when the great crocodile civilisation unions decided that their train drivers wouldn't operate the doors on the trains. It all went downhill from there. Having reached the apex of technological advancement, including creating the Crokia mobile phone - even though they didn't have the dexterity to use it and their satellites were made of coconuts - they regressed to the point where they were happiest. Cold-blooded killers.
I think there's a lesson for us all there.
 
Coal said:
I'd argue that with the timescales invoked even a moderately advanced race of dinosaurs would have left almost nothing that would have survived the millions of years for us to find. All we have from the dawn of mankind is a few crumbs of bone and chips of stone and that's barely one million years.
Click to expand...

Homo Erectus was certainly a tool user from around 2 million years ago. Earlier hominids, such as Orrorin Tugenensis, were likely tool users too and they go back over 6 million years. The use of stone tools by bonobos in the video I posted earlier, may well place them at a broadly comparable technological level to orrorin.

https://australianmuseum.net.au/orrorin-tugenensis
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Homo Erectus was certainly a tool user from around 2 million years ago. Earlier hominids, such as Orrorin Tugenensis, were likely tool users too and they go back over 6 million years. The use of stone tools by bonobos in the video I posted earlier, may well place them at a broadly comparable technological level to orrorin.

https://australianmuseum.net.au/orrorin-tugenensis
Click to expand...
Ok two million. But my previous point about "a few crumbs of bone and chips of stone" stands, when the timescale is moved onto the 70 million years ago of the Cretaceous. If stone tools were around then, they would have simply eroded away.

Never mind Jurassic (150 million years) and Triassic (215 million).

You can't rule out the possibility of a smarter dinosaur having been around and there being nothing left at all to show it.
 
"a few crumbs of bone and chips of stone"

Fair enough. The evidence for ancient human civilisation is pretty scant - a few million years for knapped flints, the earliest intentional carvings (on a sea shell) around 500,000 years ago, cave art maybe 40,000 years and stone-built settlements (Göbekli Tepe) around 12,000 years.
I wonder if substantial human constructions like the pyramids or Stonehenge would last a million years?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top