6th big earth devastation

[Deleted]

I was watching the x-files episode "biogenesis" and it starts with scully narrating the evolution of life on planet earth, from 5 natural (or not, but that doesnt matter now) disasters that absolutly wiped everything off the face of the planet, and other than plants and insects from all the other times nature created large reptiles, huge freaking monsters and dinassours..why and how on the fifth and final (so far) try the cells generated the feeble homo spiens rather than more freaky creatures ?! she also says cientists claim a 6th devastation is coming, was this claim just sci-fi?

[KassieDS]

I was watching the x-files episode "biogenesis" and it starts with scully narrating the evolution of life on planet earth, from 5 natural (or not, but that doesnt matter now) disasters that absolutly wiped everything off the face of the planet, and other than plants and insects from all the other times nature created large reptiles, huge freaking monsters and dinassours..why and how on the fifth and final (so far) try the cells generated the feeble homo spiens rather than more freaky creatures ?! she also says cientists claim a 6th devastation is coming, was this claim just sci-fi?

Assuming you're being serious, which i hope you aren't. It was just sci-fi. There are extinction events yes, but not 5 devestations that created monsters.

[Herecius]

Planetary-wide extinction events are genuine. Predicting them, however, is absurdly imperfect. We're 'due' for a planetary extinction event, but only because it's been the average amount of time since the last one. This could mean one could happen next year, or in the next million years. Predictions of that sort tend to have margin or errors in the many millions of years.

As for the 'exactness' of '5 extinction events and a 6th will happen soon,' that's just sci-fi being sci-fi. But it's based on a real thing.

[Weightless]

I was watching the x-files episode "biogenesis" and it starts with scully narrating the evolution of life on planet earth, from 5 natural (or not, but that doesnt matter now) disasters that absolutly wiped everything off the face of the planet, and other than plants and insects from all the other times nature created large reptiles, huge freaking monsters and dinassours..why and how on the fifth and final (so far) try the cells generated the feeble homo spiens rather than more freaky creatures ?! she also says cientists claim a 6th devastation is coming, was this claim just sci-fi?

"I was watching the x-files episode" that should answer your last question right there.

[-Zait-]

Better get them spaceships to Mars ready >_>

[Deleted]

when i said monsters i meant huge beasts, i didnt mean actual...monsters..
was just wondering why the gathering of cells have generated huge reptiles and strong beasts and then on the last attempt it created man

Predictions of that sort tend to have margin or errors in the many millions of years.

mmh makes sense, i suppose there would be close to no ways of determine that, other than a big-ass asteroid moving towards earth

[Deleted]

I really don't understand much what you are talking about......however:

Imagine you were a dinosaur, a freaking t-rex or something. You have scales. You have a giant jaw. You have tiny hands. You like roaring and tearing shit up.
Now don't tell me that I dinosaur would NOT think of humans as "freaky creatures", with our soft skin (wtf, why they no have scales?!) and what not....

We are just as freaky as dinosaurs, if not more

[Catta]

at some point it will happens... either by meteor or smth or ulitmately by the sun destroying earth...

It will happen Soon(TM)

[Weightless]

when i said monsters i meant huge beasts, i didnt mean actual...monsters..

I can't tell if you're trolling or not... I think not.

I don't even know how to reply to this, it's just too stupid.

[Zecora]

Not seen that X-files episode, so I cannot say if there is any solid science behind it. What I can tell you is that there has been several mass-extinctions throughout Earth's history, some of which has wiped 60-80% of all species from the face of the earth, leaving the surviving ones to spread out and make new forms to fill the niches left empty.
The reasons for such mass extinctions are several, impact from large outer-space objects such as comets, asteroids and so on is one. Massive volcanic eruptions another, and there are signs that the oceans can reach a saturation point when it comes to CO2, where the higher lifeforms die off. All of this has happened in the past.
In the present, we see another mass extinction underway, but this time the loss of biodiversity is down to human activities. It can get worse yet, but already now, we are losing species faster than any time since the end of the cretacious when the Dinosaurs went extinct.

Hops this answers your question.

[Deleted]

I can't tell if you're trolling or not... I think not.

I don't even know how to reply to this, it's just too stupid.

And i can tell perfectly fine how you ARE trolling and hope you get banned

---------- Post added 2011-07-16 at 11:34 AM ----------

Not seen that X-files episode, so I cannot say if there is any solid science behind it. What I can tell you is that there has been several mass-extinctions throughout Earth's history, some of which has wiped 60-80% of all species from the face of the earth, leaving the surviving ones to spread out and make new forms to fill the niches left empty.
The reasons for such mass extinctions are several, impact from large outer-space objects such as comets, asteroids and so on is one. Massive volcanic eruptions another, and there are signs that the oceans can reach a saturation point when it comes to CO2, where the higher lifeforms die off. All of this has happened in the past.
In the present, we see another mass extinction underway, but this time the loss of biodiversity is down to human activities. It can get worse yet, but already now, we are losing species faster than any time since the end of the cretacious when the Dinosaurs went extinct.

Hops this answers your question.

It actually has, thank you so much.
I realise the x-files are sci-fi but they are inspired, on this particular episode at least by real events. And i was just thinking if a new mass wipe-out was due for real or not, and why did men were the ones to actually flourish on the face of the planet when the other beasts are 10 times stronger and more resistant, maybe it was just chance.

[Weightless]

And i can tell perfectly fine how you ARE trolling and hope you get banned

Fine, let me try to answer you then. First let's go back to your OP.

I was watching the x-files episode "biogenesis" and it starts with scully narrating the evolution of life on planet earth, from 5 natural (or not, but that doesnt matter now) disasters that absolutly wiped everything off the face of the planet, and other than plants and insects from all the other times nature created large reptiles, huge freaking monsters and dinassours..why and how on the fifth and final (so far) try the cells generated the feeble homo spiens rather than more freaky creatures ?! she also says cientists claim a 6th devastation is coming, was this claim just sci-fi?

Firstly, stay in school, you can't spell anything.

You were watching a fictional television series where they made a claim that there were 5 natural big disasters, but apparently according to you that isn't the point. I don't know much about dinosaurs and how they came to be, I'm sure no one does really other than guesses, but I do have an idea of how evolution works. There might have been a more suitable atmosphere back then that supported reptiles to grow to the sizes of dinosaurs, we don't know.

Why would cells (as you refer to them as if they choose, lol) just want to create bigger and badder monsters for the sake of them being... big? Maybe the planet can't support such giant races. Dinosaurs and cavemen were millions of years apart - the planet changed, the atmosphere changed, there is no reason that a completely different animal can't evolve out of it.

Whatever it was that wiped the dinosaurs out; it really wiped them out. Homo sapiens evolved from (in simple terms) gorillas. Species evolve because there is a NEED to evolve, not because they just feel like evolving. Natural selection runs it's course and we evolve into the humans that we are today because of necessity.

Use your head. You were watching X-Files. Learn to write sentences properly, at least try.

[Teroseth]

To be fair, it is a question that can't be answered. It could just be simply that smaller creatures require less energy, and have more chance of surviving a cataclysmic effect thanks to that. To say humans are feeble though isn't strictly true...other animals have teeth and claws, we have our brains. Now, you could argue that perhaps we've become soft, and it's probably true that most humans dumped into the wild with only whatever tools they could find, would probably end up dying or moaning about the situation, but it's only become that way because we've been so ridiculously successful as a species. You think dinosaurs developed irrigation? Drove little dinosaur cars...created dino pcs to watch raptor porn...man that'd be awesome...but it simply didn't happen.

A possible interesting thing I urge you look at is human evolution, people often think we're the finished product. Not even close, people of different nationalities are actually diverging biologically. You've got the macro divergance, such as people from the equator generally being taller than those from further north due to heat dissipation...or in the micro; the Japanese have an extra enzyme that exists in their gut that helps with the digestion of fish. Nobody native to North America has this enzyme (unless they're recently descended from the Japanese, obviously). It could very well be in the future that there are giant humans that rival the dinosaur oin stature. That's the beauty about evolution, it's constantly ongoing

[Weightless]

was just wondering why the gathering of cells have generated huge reptiles and strong beasts and then on the last attempt it created man

You really can't be this clueless. You think cells are conspirators actually attempting to create different species? "The gathering of cells"? What????????????????????????

[Zecora]

when i said monsters i meant huge beasts, i didnt mean actual...monsters..
was just wondering why the gathering of cells have generated huge reptiles and strong beasts and then on the last attempt it created man

There aren't any..."gathering of cells" as such, beyond in the lifeforms that survive the mass extinctions. No mass extinction we know of have reduced the remaining biodiversity to just single-cell or cellular clusters.

What happens is that any mass extinction leaves biological niches empty, such as "large grass-eating animal" or "predator that relies on speed" and so on (this is very simplified). The creatures that survives then evolve to fill the empty niches. You enquire about forms which we would refer to as "monstrous". Yes, the last mass extinction led to some forms like that, such as giant predatory birds, whales that looked more like a sea serpent than anything else, giant marsupials...all of these though, has either gone extinct due to lack of adaptation to changing climate and food opportunity, or been out-competed and subsequently gone extinct in the competition with newer forms. If you are interested in the forms that arose after the last mass extinction, I recomend the BBC series "Walking with Beasts".

[Lagwin]

the why is limited gene pool and the need for more specialized ways of getting food, like you say the trend at the was large monsters and such but it just so happenes that after the last extinction humans evolved slightly quicker than the would be competition giving us the best chance to survive and dominate. as for the next extinction event, yeah there will be one....some time.

[Deleted]

Firstly, stay in school, you can't spell anything.

[/INDENT]

Thank you for your answer.
First off i am not an english speaking person, that is why my spelling is so terrible, no need to take the piss out of me for it though.
I may have explained myself poorly, i was just trying to make sense of what scully was saying, filtering the sci-fi from the actual facts. That it would make sense for cells, not in a premeditated fashion obviously to conjure something that has high chances of survival rather than the weak homo sapiens.
I just didn`t took in account that the climate and conditions were diferent on the planet from the time of the dinos to mankind and thus they didn`t need to adapt and overcome the same obstacles.

---------- Post added 2011-07-16 at 11:56 AM ----------

the why is limited gene pool and the need for more specialized ways of getting food, like you say the trend at the was large monsters and such but it just so happenes that after the last extinction humans evolved slightly quicker than the would be competition giving us the best chance to survive and dominate. as for the next extinction event, yeah there will be one....some time.

Pretty much the whole answer here sir

[Zecora]

It actually has, thank you so much.
I realise the x-files are sci-fi but they are inspired, on this particular episode at least by real events. And i was just thinking if a new mass wipe-out was due for real or not, and why did men were the ones to actually flourish on the face of the planet when the other beasts are 10 times stronger and more resistant, maybe it was just chance.

You're very welcome. As for Homo Sapiens (that's us) and our predecessors (Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis, etc...) We didn't take over after the mass extinctions. In fact, for tens of millions of years, our ancestors were small, tree-dwelling creatures with no more brain that your average rat. At some point, the forests gave way to open grasslands (probably due to dry climate) and some of our ancestors moved down unto the ground to find food. At some point, they started developing bigger and more efficient brains, most probably because this was beneficial in the environment they lived in. They were weaker than the predators that preyed on them (H. Erectus skulls with marks from saber-toothed cats have been found) and they were unable to take down the larger prey, so they probably ate a lot of roots and berries, along with carcasses they found at first. However, they were social beings capable of planning and to some extent communicating, so this gave them an edge.
In time, that expanded intellect meant that they could make sharp sticks and hunt, rather than just look for dead animals and roots. They were still weaker than most other animals (although still a lot stronger than we are today...just like a chimp is smaller than a grown person, but it can rip your arm off) but co-operation and intelligence gave them the edge they needed over brute strength, teeth and claws.

In short, they were not just adapted to their own environment, but capable of adapting themselves to different environments.

[Deleted]

Well, if it would occur, it wouldn't threaten humans much. Dinosaurs died out not because a meteor hit them in the head but because of the "nuclear" winter after the impact and cold. Humans would just build warmer buildings and knit cozy sweaters.

And as far as the "feeble" humans are concerned, they aren't that feeble at all. If dinosaurs were still around today and werent extinct, they'd soon be.. unless Im mistaken and they build tanks, guns and choppers too.

[Notalent]

Well, if it would occur, it wouldn't threaten humans much. Dinosaurs died out not because a meteor hit them in the head but because of the "nuclear" winter after the impact and cold. Humans would just build warmer buildings and knit cozy sweaters.

And as far as the "feeble" humans are concerned, they aren't that feeble at all. If dinosaurs were still around today and werent extinct, they'd soon be.. unless Im mistaken and they build tanks, guns and choppers too.

The cold didn't kill dinosaurs themselves. The cold killed they're food, aka plants. We'd have the same problem they had which is massive famine leading to starvation.