Guest “thank God for asteroids” by David Middleton
My first guess would have been Chicago, but, apparently it was the Sahara Desert region back during the Cretaceous Period…
PALAEONTOLOGISTS REVEAL ‘THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH’
The biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from the Kem Kem Group has been published.
24 April 2020100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area of Cretaceous rock formations in south-eastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.
The review, published in the journal ZooKeys, “provides a window into Africa’s Age of Dinosaurs” according to lead author Dr Nizar Ibrahim, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Detroit Mercy and Visiting Researcher from the University of Portsmouth.
About 100 million years ago, the area was home to a vast river system, filled with many different species of aquatic and terrestrial animals. Fossils from the Kem Kem Group include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, including the sabre-toothed Carcharodontosaurus (over 8m in length with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long) and Deltadromeus (around 8m in length, a member of the raptor family with long, unusually slender hind limbs for its size), as well as several predatory flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and crocodile-like hunters. Dr Ibrahim said: “This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”
[…]
University of Plymouth
This statement is arguably wrong:
“This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”
A properly armed human time traveler might last quite a while…
Whereas a human time traveler who opted to visit Cancun at the end of the Cretaceous Period wouldn’t stand a chance.
Easy answer- Australia! Land, air, sea, river- you name it, it’s got a bloody killer lurking somewhere….. “This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”
A properly armed human time traveler might last quite a while…
These quotes remind me of a question I was asked years ago- ‘In a fight between a tiger and a man, which would win?’ I answered tiger of course- then felt a little silly when the answer, ‘A man of course, because he would use the gun created by his superior brain. Each of us must use our strengths to their maximum’ Eat that hippies!
Good god don’t eat the hippies! They have parasites! (…well they are parasites)
Hmm, I always thought it was Chicago’s South Side, West Baltimore or San Salvador.
Whatever happened to Cleveland or Detroit?
Detroit isn’t bad any more. The city is making a comeback from horrible criminal leadership.
Pretty sure its detroit, see attached proof
Pretty sure it’s Detroit
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bVDDYQlmq0w
There was a time when East Palo Alto (CA) was the most dangerous place in the US.
At least the South side of Chicago was the baddest part of town
According to Jim Croce anyway
Definitely Chicago — the whole town died in one night:
https://youtu.be/dDJRq8armFs
ht/Paper Lace
Well the south side of Chicago Is the baddest part of town
Countries with the highest murder rates suffer under strict gun control, with possible exception of Honduras:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/murder-rates-by-country.html
The other thing about the Cretaceous is the mid Cretaceous warm period thought to have been geologically induced by the mid Cretaceous Superplume which climate science sees this way: “The superplume brought carbon from the mantle to the atmosphere and the atmospheric CO2 did the warming”.
Wonder what David Middleton would have to say about that.
Funny thing… Before 1988, the CO2 didn’t cause the warming… And it lagged behind the warming.
However it all happened, the Mid-Cretaceous made a helluva lot of oil… 👍👍
Yes sir.
Here is the climate science of it.
The mid‐Cretaceous super plume, carbon dioxide, and global warming
Ken Caldeira, Michael R Rampino
Geophysical Research Letters 18 (6), 987-990, 1991
Carbon‐dioxide releases associated with a mid‐Cretaceous super plume is suggested as a principal cause of the mid‐Cretaceous global warming. We developed a carbonate‐silicate cycle climate model to quantify the climatic effects of these CO2 releases.
Ken Caldeira also invented the phrase “ocean acidification” out of thin air… Creative writing must be a new branch science… 😉
Unless the Mid-Jurassic spike in CO2 caused the Mid-Cretaceous warmth, I think we can exonerate CO2…
UEA is well-known for its creative writing program. They pioneered teaching the subject in the UK. “We established the first MA in Creative Writing in 1970 and the first PhD in Creative and Critical Writing in 1987. Creative Writing at undergraduate level has been taught since the 1960s.”
UEA’s Climatology Dept. must be a branch of their Creating Writing program.
Isn’t it a Creative Magical writing?
I’m certain that human induced CO2 isn’t a problem. It seems that all of the harmful warming and subsequent damages is a byproduct of Climate Models.
The proliferation of climate models in the latter half of the 20th Century and their dramatic increase in the early 21st Century is what has led to the vastly increased warming trend.
I’m certain that there’s a direct correlation between the predicted warming and tribulations and the quantity of Climate Models.
Ban all Climate Models now.
“Superplume” is just a word meaning widespread basaltic volcanism. There seems to have been a lot of it in and around the Pacific basin in the Cretaceous. The LIP commission identifies four separate Large Igneous Provinces that they say are part of the so-called mid-Cretaceous superplume, the Ontong-Java plateau event being the largest. But if you look at the ages, they cluster around 145, 120 and 90 million years, i.e. covering most of the Cretaceous period, thus making it not a single event at all; it’s at least three separate events spread over 55 million years and 20 million km².
“Mantle plumes” are channels (best word I can think of) where basaltic magma rises from the mantle to the surface. Calling them “plumes” doesn’t really tell you anything; it’s just a name. Nobody can give you a physical description of what a mantle plume looks like or what causes it. And “superplume” is just a cute way of saying there was a lot of it going on in the Cretaceous.
Once you have a lot of volcanic activity, you have fodder for the climate change battalion. If they think there might have been a warmer-than-usual climate, it’s volcanic CO2 causing global warming. If they need cooling, there’s volcanic SO2 and “aerosols”. And if you browse through the LIP record at http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org you can find an event to match just about any inferred change in paleoclimate. Instant explanation – no thought required. Such is the wonder of climate science.
chaamjamal, I have no idea what David has to say, however I read the article about “mid Creyaceous Superplume” and find it to be mostly a scientific review of Cretaceous seamounts on a Jurassic ocean crust. However, without any citation of evidence or proof, the author wanders into the idea that carbon dioxide associated with the superplume raised the earth temperature 10 deg C and raised sea level 250 meters. This sea level event is marked by the Mancos Shale incursion into New Mexico to Montana, including the Greenhoen Limestone marker, which I explored for tactite development (discovered Lukas Canyon gold deposit at Ortiz, New Mexico). The author then goes on to attribute current global warming to deforestation and fossil fuels (to enhance the potential of further research funding?). The cited superplume does not appear to be any different from other mantle plumes, such as Hawaii or Yellowstone. So my comment about mid Cretaceous superplume is that it is a regular plume. By the way, the same Cretaceous interval in the Neuquén Basin of Argentina also has many predator fossils and would have been a dangerous place for time-travelers, especially like those two mis-handling a variety of firearms in the video Stay sane and safe.
Hello Ron Long
Thank you very much for this very interesting and well informed comment.
Pleased to meet you sir.
Good info until the last sentence, that’s Reba your talkin about, I demand satisfaction, I choose water pistols at 10 pace!
Ah well, who really knows what was the most dangerous place relative to the existing flora and fauna at the time? I have to question such pronouncements, just as I question if the line of Hominids that developed into Homo sapiens came out of the regions of Africa that we’re told with great confidence they did.
My skepticism is based on the fact that the preponderance of fossils or remains found come from locations where the current conditions of climate, terrain, and the lack of human travel and settlement over the ages makes preservation and access to them relatively ideal compared to other places.
100 million years ago puts it in the Cretaceous. What about the Jurassic and Triassic? I would suspect that each period would have it’s own most dangerous place and the most recent period would be the one easiest to find. Granted that it is generally accepted that dinosaurs evolved to become larger and more powerful and thus more adept at their roles over time.
Cretaceous predatory dinosaurs (and other top carnivores) were more deadly than those of the Triassic and Jurassic, which were still no slouches.
In some South American Late Cretaceous environments, crocodyliformes rather than theropod dinos were top predators:
An Additional Baurusuchid from the Cretaceous of Brazil with Evidence of Interspecific Predation among Crocodyliformes
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097138
In a hundred millions years, people, aliens, whatever will look back and ruminate that the most dangerous place on Earth today is between a progressive and a bucket of other people’s money.
Within about 5 million years of our demise, there will barely be a trace that we ever existed
Hopefully we will overcome the anti-science dogma of the Progressive Church of Climatology and get up out of the gravity well. Maybe we will leave habitats on the Moon and Mars that will outlast us by a few million years. Or maybe we will continue expand across this arm of our galaxy and come back to visit a well tended Museum of Ancient Earth with primitive devices like jets and internal combustion engines! How quaint!
In re getting out of the gravity well, figurative blackholes are just as effective as literal blackholes. It is the figurative blackhole that makes bureaucratic inertia the most powerful force in the causal universe.
But it’s the Dark Side of the Force
That’s nothing compared to the dark side of the Schwartz.
Based on current events however I would say the most dangerous political place on the planet right now is the podium in the WH briefing room.
“Paleontologists identify most dangerous place on Earth”
Washington DC under Obama? There must be a fossil record there.
I wonder what future archaeologists will make of corpses only whose feet are preserved encased in concrete. “Obviously of ritual or religious significance”…
Concrete won’t be preserved in the fossil record, millions of years in the future.
I always wondered what future paleontologists would make of pull tabs from soda and beer cans… Really weird crinoid stems?
Coprolites from Metal Munching Moon Mice?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-Munching_Mice
Aluminum scales from a creature with a ferro-skeleton that oxidized away?
Capitol Hill insiders claim an even more dangerous spot is between a TV camera, Chuck Schumer & Nancy Pelosi.
Remember, as always, Time, Distance and Shielding, and if you are between Lugosi and Schumer then you are tickling the Dragon’s ‘Tail’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
Search for “Dragon’s Tail.”
If all that is left for archeologists in the future is CNN footage, the deadliest time on Earth was the Trumpocene.
I have a suspicion that the oceans of the past would be quite dangerous too. Never could see the logic of the makers of the 1950s film version of “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” having James Mason wading into a sea when a “Dimetrodon” threatened them – what did they imagine a contemporary ocean would have been inhabited by? Goldfish?
The Cretaceous Kansas Sea gets my vote for interesting and exciting places to visit with any future time machine; would I go? You bet. But paddling would be out.
Yes, imagine the ignominy of being ravaged by a pack of carnivorous trilobites.
Or just one giant Eurypterid…
Damn, I’m gonna need a bigger pot
Our evolutionary future? I do like the pincers. Or perhaps the stinger….
Nigel Marven’s series on the seven most dangerous seas OAT agreed with you:
Sea Monsters – A Walking with Dinosaurs Trilogy
David,
Are you sure it isn’t standing between a politician and a microphone or TV camera? Pleistocene North America with it’s Smilodon and Dire Wolves might not be quite as daunting but I’d still want to be carrying an AR 10 in a bull pup configuration and a Barrett Light Fifty or .416 when you want to reach out and touch something! Better still to be part of a team with a SAW and some anti-tank weapons like an M72 LAW and don’t forget the AA-12 auto shotgun! A few 30 round magazines of 12 gauge should put a crimp in most appetites and afterwards you can go swimming with Megalodon! Ouch!
Abolition Man
Many years ago I was visiting a theme park in the Bay Area that had some life-sized reproductions of large dinosaurs. One of them was a T. rex posed with its head at about face level. When I went up to it, the hair raised on the back of my neck! After contemplating it, I concluded that an AR-15 (M-16) would probably just make it very annoyed. Being well-acquainted with what a modern .30-caliber rifle can do, (a .30-06/FMJ can penetrate 27″ of solid oak) I decided it probably would kill it, but not before it bit me in half. (I remember reading a story about a hunter who shot a Kodiak bear at 100 yds; it closed the distance in 10 seconds and killed the hunter before dying because its heart had been exploded by the .30-caliber bullet.) My gut feeling was that anything less than a .50-caliber Barrett would not kill it quickly enough (one might want to initially aim for the knee to cripple it) to prevent collateral damage to me.
The Outdoor Life article suggests shooting T Rex in the knee first to disable him. Then finishing him off with a couple of lung shots. Head shots were not recommended.
Lol…I just spit up coffee.
I love Outdoor Life and must have missed that issue
David,
The .50cal and .416cal Barrett armor-piercing rounds should penetrate an engine block! I don’t know if T. Rex would have enough gray matter to realize it was however. So I would go along with their suggestion. I don’t care for the lung shots though. Nobody deserves to die a slow painful from a gut shot; except maybe criminally corrupt FBI and DOJ officials!
David
I think it was Outdoor Life that I originally read about the Kodiak hunter. I didn’t realize that they were now recounting stories of hunting T. rex!
It was a “what if” article… But clearly a very destructive knee capping is the way to drop YUGE carnivores, who might not know they were dead before they killed you… 😎
Just hit him in the softly fleshy part of his inner mouth with a tranq dart and once he’s cruisin for a snoozin, extract his teeth
Bryan A
And slam the hatch shut on your tank while you wait for the tranquilizer to take effect!
When my polar bear (legal shot by an Inuit) came back from the taxidermist, my grandson was at the advanced crawling stage. My daughter plopped him on the floor and he scuttled toward it, got to 2 feet from the head with its open mouth, and screamed blue murder. Never knew there was an innate fear response like that. Seems we evolved with preditors with large teeth.
FranBC,
My favorite Vargas girl of all time was a red-head on a polar bear rug! I have dreamed of getting the polar bear ever since; got the red-head but the divorce took all the money I was saving for the hunt!
Clyde,
As an ex-Bay Area guy I am glad to hear you escaped to freedom. I would never recommend an AR-15 for large game; minimal requirement is an AR-10 with 20 rounds of .308! The Barrett Light Fifty is nice but the .416 has a much higher muzzle velocity and greater accuracy at long range (one mile+.) The AA-12 (see Russian auto 12 gauge on YouTube) would be spectacular if it had armor piercing or explosive rounds available. I would like to think 20 or 40 rounds of .308 would be enough to discourage most bears! Not that I’m going to test that theory. I like the nice little bears we have in my neck of the woods; except when they pull down my hummingbird feeders!
Abolition Man
The problem with AP rounds is that you don’t want to go through the target. You want all that energy to be expended in the body of the beast. Although, at the same time you want to be sure that you can get through the hide. Even a feral hog can be problematic, and they are the size of a juvenile T. rex. Shooting a T. rex from a mile away might would be a good idea, except that you might not be able to see that far through its normal habitat. How about a quick handling, short-barrel Barrett?
If .700 Nitro Express double rifle be too pricey (probably not for a high-end time traveler) or a repeater be deemed essential, then .458 Winchester.
Why not go with an M203 40 mm grenade launcher mounted on an M4 carbine?
Drop T Rex or Ursus spelaeus with an M433 HE DP 40 mm round. Then finish off with 5.56 mm as needed… 😎
That would work, much as I don’t like 5.56mm and direct impingement op system. However, it takes a while to reload an underslung, single-shot grenade launcher.
Presumably our time traveler isn’t alone, so one member of the party could carry a revolving grenade launcher.
The giant short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) made the cave bear look like, if not a teddy, then a black bear. Its closest living relative is the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) of South America. Not that cave bears were small. They were grizzly-sized, but Arctodus simus was truly gigantic, pushing a long ton. Some have suggested that it kept people from colonizing North America for millennia.
The .223 round generally fired by the M4 is unsuitable for large or dangerous game.
As a meat round it is still unsuitable, causing much meat to be damaged.
The .223’s high velocity tends to cause it to fragment shortly after piercing thick skin; a certain method for ticking off dangerous beasts.
The base rifle, AR for Armalite, is highly modular. It’s larger brother the AR-10 size which is designed for the .308 cartridge is easily modified to take larger cartridges suitable for most sizes of dangerous game while capable of shooting slower shells for small food items.
Yes, the .458 Winchester is a worthy cartridge for large dangerous game, but the 45-70 or 460 S&W could be more practical across a broad range; shooting .45 rimmed colt, .45 long Colt, .45-70, .454 Casull and .460 S&W.
And you can still hang the M203 underneath for dealing with flocks of raptosauri.
That’s why I added the M203 grenade launcher firing HE DP 40 mm rounds. The HE DP can penetrate 5 cm of steel armor and has a 5-7 round per minute rate of fire. The M4 firing .556 “green tip” should be adequate to finish off T Rex if the greande didn’t kill it. It should also be effective on velociraptor-type dinosaurs. I’d use regular HE grenades on them.
When you get tired of planning for the Zombie Apocalypse, anti-dino firearms:
Mk 19 is what you want.
I much preferred the old M 79 to the M 203 for accuracy and ease of use. Compact and light enough to carry separately.
Mk 19 and an HMMWV… Or UH-1B/C.
Well I do remember some old black & white movie where a Sikorsky S-51 helicopter held off a T Rex with it’s rotor. Hollywood!
Rah,
Yes, thought has been given to bringing back a superblooper rather than underslung GL.
Mk19 is a whole different animal. SF guys in Afghanistan told me that it was way too sensitive to dust there. However my weapons evaluating brother was a big advocate of it, as was general McCaffrey.
For Maastrichtian T. rex and and Pleistocene short-faced bear, .700 Nitro Express.
“thank God for asteroids”
Or not – I think life on earth became poorer after Chixilub.
Dinosaurs are a superior body design to mammals.
One major aspect of this is the dinosaur-bird lung design where air goes through one way only in a complex system involving air sacs. By conrast us mammals have a tidal lung – air in and out the same way – which is – no exaggeration – 10 times less efficient. That’s why bird lungs are smaller and rigid but way more effective – just look what birds can do and we can’t.
OK bats can fly, even with their inefficient tidal lungs.
But to do this they must raise their metabolic levels to exceptionally high rates.
This increases the efficiency of DNA repair systems which has the side effect of allowing the bat to tolerate a much higher level of virus infection.
This is why bats are hosts to many viruses and is the reason for covid19 – and all the other bat derived viruses.
Chixilub gave us covid19.
(It’s an open question however whether a small dinosaur / bird would ever have been able to occupy the bat niche. Probably the answer is no – or it would have happened already. The sonar ears are the big challenge I guess. Owls have very good hearing but they’re too big. Bats enjoy a feast of flying night-time insects that await any animal able to fly at night and locate insects by sound. So far only bats can do this.)
Phil, Chi-Com 19, please! Keeps us from confusing it with the other viral epidemics brought to the world by the Chinese Communist Party. Oh, never mind!
Xi’s Disease.
No Chicxulub, no people.
No people, no Communists.
No Communists, no ChiCom-19.
QED
No Chicxulub, no blue pectolite.
CtM posted the article about the aftermath of the Chicxulub Impactor about a year ago:
“66-million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor”
Charles Rotter / April 1, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/01/66-million-year-old-deathbed-linked-to-dinosaur-killing-meteor/
No PETM hyperthermal no practically everything mammalian.
Yes really. Most modern mammalian orders show up during or just after the PETM.
True.
Birds and snakes however enjoyed rapid adaptive radiation in the Paleocene.
Dave
No Chixilub, no people.
Or maybe there could have been.
There are signs that the later Cretaceous dinosaurs such as the Struthiomimids were evolving in the direction of small agile body design including binocular vision (flat faces), expanding brains and possibly opposing digits on their forelimbs. Who knows – given a few more million years they might have evolved sentient self-awareness and high intelligence with language etc. Thus it’s possible that, far from bringing on intelligent species (humans), Chixilub May have delayed their emergence. Evolution had to start again from a Cretaceous squirrel.
This is pure speculation of course. However one thing is beyond doubt. Intelligent dinosaurs would have made excellent organists. The big problem for a human organist is balance – one has to lean forward to press the keyboard with hands and the foot pedals below simultaneously. The tail-less organist is this unbalanced and this compromises performance. By contrast a dinosaur organist would have his substantial tail out behind as the perfect counterweight, and would have experienced no such balance issues. The world has truly missed out on a rendition by Compsognathus of Bach’s toccata and fugue in D minor
https://youtu.be/ho9rZjlsyYY
But derived theropods have only three fingers, or one or two.
Their reptile brains limit what birds can do. However magpies, the only birds known to pass the mirror recognition test, do sport a structure similar to mammalian neocortex. All members of the crow family are scarily intelligent and good at problem solving, but Eurasian magpies are top bird.
Parrots are smart, too, but seem more so than they really are, since they can talk. Parrots look behind the mirror to see the bird which must be there.
“Crows are the hominins of the bird kingdom,” says co-author Dr. Jeroen Smaers of Stony Brook University. “Like our own ancestors, they evolved proportionally massive brains by increasing both their body size and brain size at the same time, with the brain size increase happening even more rapidly.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200423130506.htm
Right you are. Crow family also shows tool use. Had the mammals not arisen, high intelligence probably would have emerged among omnivorous birds.
tty
That’s interesting about the PETM, and a little paradoxical. Generally dinosaurs were warm adapted while mammals are cold adapted, appropriate in a world that cooled substantially during the Tertiary. Did the PETM cause another minor extinction event?
The only significant PETM extinctions were among benthic foraminifera, many of which recovered.
Coccolithophores however appear to have enjoyed the PETM – see fig 1 – although they declined generally with Tertiary cooling:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/7/e1501822.full
Another organism for which the warm Mesozoic was ideal climate, and which doesn’t like our current Pleistocene cold 🥶 .
Warmer = Better for life… Even during the PETM. The PETM was so good for life that many of the foram extinctions were only temporary… Or, more likely, just relocations.
Bats are more maneuverable than birds, and developed echolocation.
This helps proves the point that AGW scare science and grandstanding with headlines is contagious.
The Bronx !
Watched it 3 times; yup, he got 3 shots out of a double-barrel without reloading, and was lining up for a 4th. Anybody who can do that is bound to overcome most dangers, Cretaceous or otherwise.
I count two shots… He did fire it from under the arm though.
How could you have counted 3 shots??
When my kids were teenagers, they got into a ‘funny bad’ horror movie thing. Their two favorites were Tremors (DM’s wrong rec room clip with Reba blasting the sandworm) and Arachnophobia with John Candy as the exterminator.
The exterminator was John Goodman… Great bad SciFi… 👍👍
Tremors is one of the best… Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward deserved Oscars! 😎
DM, you are another afficionado of really funny bad sciencey stuff. Carry on. Alinsky rule 5 is about ridicule. You do it well.
I got tired posting such stuff albeit with a more ‘scientific misconduct’ and less ‘just funny’ bent over at Judiths a while ago (last IIRC was Totten Glacier in EAIS, best were IMO Shell Games and One if by land, two if by sea, both later in ebook Blowing Smoke). Plus significant other has had some unfunny bad medical stuff last few years that preoccupies more of my time.
Never thought would see the classically absurd Tremors clip at WUWT. Salud!
Rud,
When it comes to classically absurd movie clips, you know you can count on me! 😎
Did either of you see Under Lake Placid?
I have not. I do like the original Lake Placid, particularly Betty White’s character.
That’s the one I meant – “Under” was a mistake.
Never break into a rec room containing a Dillon 550 reloading press. Of course you need something bigger to load ammo for the .500 nitro express double rifle that finally finished off the mother-humper.
That was actually an 8 bore slug, even bigger than .500 nitro bullet.
The Cretaceous Sahara? C’mon. Antarctica or the winter Arctic would freeze & kill most of today’s animals, including unprotected people, in minutes.
My favorite part of that movie is at 3:00 when they turn around and there is a fully loaded arsinel of recognizable guns hung on a pegboard. Gun cabinets are for the classics like W&M 8 gauges, not your lousy HK91. Burt is the type of guy you want on your side in conventional ground warfare or graboid invasions.
And as far as the most dangerous place in the history of Earth, does the Archean Eon not count?
It’s not a patch on the Hadean Eon.
Thanks for the tip.
Of course wherever you run into one of those monsters is the most dangerous place on earth, for you.
Going back that far you could end up treading water or on the lip of a volcano. Or you could find yourself falling a long way if you went back at the same altitude. Or inside a mountain.
Olen
Or find yourself in the vacuum of space where no one can hear you scream. Time is also a place! The wrong place in the orbit and you miss Earth entirely.
Sounds like a very luxurious place with minimal freezes.
A) They found fossils of those critters… So what!? There are many places on this world that are not conducive to fossils. That does not indicate those places lacked mean nasty toothy critters!
B) Just what do they thing human beans do in survival!? Stand around and point their fingers?
Just more idiot assumptions based upon insufficient data and pure fantasies.
Any higher education receiving formal presentation that utilizes pure fantasy, complete with shadow box figurines no doubt, should give them zero marks!
“Just what do they thing human beans do in survival!? Stand around and point their fingers?”
Might work. Reminds me of the advice I got about 40 years ago from an “old Africa hand”:
“In a tight spot, whatever you do, don’t run, everything dangerous runs faster than you. Stand still, wave you arms and scream, that usually works”
https://jokes.boyslife.org/jokes/you-cant-outrun-a-bear/
😆
Make yourself look bigger. If the predator can’t climb, go up a tree. Unfortunately today, most can.
Humans, just like most life on Earth have the ability to recognize danger signs.
Ignoring clear signs of nearby predators while taking a solo night time stroll are likely causes of failing to pass genes along.
Humans thrived in Africa surrounded by lions, leopards, crocodiles, hippos, elephants and a host of poisonous snakes and vengeful honeybees…
They did not survive by making themselves freely available!
Few things excite a predator more than prey fleeing. And yes, prey desperately trying to claw their way up a tree counts as fleeing.
If climbing trees is a safe as people believe, homo sapiens would never have evolved tailless bipedal movement, shorter fingers and stumpy feet.
In the near past, humans on the North America continent would contend with short face bears, dire wolves, saber tooth cats and mammoths along with ordinary wolves, cougars, grizzly, brown, polar and black bears, alligators and crocodiles.
He11, even deer, horses, mountain goats, mountain sheep and sows and boars are dangerous one-on-one against unarmed individual humans.
When armed Europeans first colonized North America many had an extremely difficult time surviving. If the Natives didn’t get them, then wildlife, starvation, vitamin/nutrient shortages and disease did.
Proclaiming one area as the most deadly based upon archaeologist’s dilettante samples of fossils is ridiculous. Sheer hubris ridiculous.
Small holes dug in fossiliferous ground allows these recluses to assume they know all prehistoric life everywhere.
The East Coast of North America has dinosaur trackways, but darn few dinosaur bones. North America’s East Coast is not conducive to bones; as are many other parts of the world.
Don’t run is a simplification. Do not panic is a little clearer.
Even jaded urban human sense of smell can detect when a person is scared silly indicating that scared just a shade more that person may bolt.
Playing dead sometimes works, mostly for bears, sometimes for cats, less frequently for wolves, wolverines and other carrion eaters.
Carrion eaters may consider humans playing dead just mean they got there first. Choice parts get eaten first.
Survival entails a number of critical steps.
A safe water supply,
A safe place to sleep which requires a fire,
Self defense equipment; knife, spear, bow and arrows, axe, club if needed,
Warm clothing,
Ability to recognize and collect/harvest/capture foods and prepare them for long storage.
I will agree with the researchers on a key point. I’d much rather face dangerous mammals than “largest predatory dinosaurs” who’ve spent hours basking in sunlight to fully charge their musculature.
As a person who has caught sun warmed snakes and lizards, I can attest they get darn fast. Much better to search for them just after dawn. Just as humans seek protective cover for the night, snakes and lizards tend to be well hidden by dawn.
Dinosaurs were warm-blooded. They didn’t need to spend hours basking in the sun. They’re birds.
But extra energy from the sun couldn’t have hurt.
ATheoK
I’d much rather face dangerous mammals than “largest predatory dinosaurs” who’ve spent hours basking in sunlight to fully charge their musculature.
Your post was good up to that point.
John is right – dinos were warm blooded.
Also they had the avian type of lung with associated air sacs, with one way flow of air and 10 times (yes 10) more gas exchange efficiency. They were a much more energetic animal – as birds are today. While dinosaurs ruled for 150 million years, mammals (who existed almost all the way back to the Permian) were restricted to marginal niches such as nocturnal tree rodents. The Jurassic Park films got that part right at least, if only accidentally. Appearance of dinosaurs on earth now would be exceedingly bad news for mammals.
“In a tight spot, whatever you do, don’t run, everything dangerous runs faster than you. Stand still, wave you arms and scream, that usually works”
Can often work with human muggers too.
The *last* rifle used in the clip is a Stopping Rifle. It’s intended use is exactly as portrayed, to stop very large, very dangerous animals at close range. Typically they were made in 4-bore (!) with a nominal projectile weight of 1/4 lb, or 4 oz.
The recoil had to be such that you would not shoot one if you like your body the way it is.
Here is Forgotten Weapons giving a run-down on the beast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDYtxxRU_cY
Enjoy.
No, getting between Sheila Jackson Lee and a camera is still a more dangerous place to be
If ignorance was catching it would be deadly to get close to her.
I’m not sure how bad the flatulence from these critters were but surely the Somme was a bit more dangerous not that long ago. Definitely a few places in Japan that were worse even more recently.
I thought we all agreed it was “warmist ‘research’ cruise around Antarctica in August”….
I would have thought it was the higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide that made that time so dangerous…
A colourless, odourless, non-toxic gas has to be worse than about nine tonnes of therapod breathing down your neck.
Come to think of it, if the emissions of my cows are evil, how bad were the emissions of a sauropod herd?
I saw two polar bears get into a fight over a bag of marshmallows some idiot threw into their enclosure at the zoo. At that point in time getting between those bears and that bag was the most dangerous place on earth. Very large critters, lots of teeth and claws and as fast as any cat!
Spinosaurus, largest theropod predator in this environment, hunted fish by swimming in the water. From April 29:
Tail-propelled aquatic locomotion in a theropod dinosaur
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2190-3
IMO, the Maastrichtian Hell Creek environment of NW North America would have been at least as dangerous as Cenomanian NW Africa.
IMO Carcharodontosaurus wouldn’t have stood a chance against T. rex from 30 million years in its future.