Meanwhile in Russia: fighting climate change... with mammoths

[DDE]

OK, clickbait titles abound. It's actually about the characteristic ecosystem known as the mammoth steppe, although the people involved have repeatedly stated their willingness to deploy mammoths or even a cheap gene-spliced knock-off.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kommersant.ru%2Fdoc%2F3819067

http://www.pleistocenepark.ru/en/background/

And... err... their Kickstarter (mods, don't kill me).

TL;DR: unlike the modern moss and tree-dominated tundra, the mammoth steppes covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during the last Ice Age, mutually supported by large grazers - such as the mammoth. The hypothesis here is that the biosphere was a massive boon to carbon sequestering, and there was an additional benefit of all the trampled snow being a better insulator, further fortifying the permafrost. So now, all of that is gone except for two tiny enclaves deep in the Eurasian interior, while global temperatures rise and threaten to launch a vicious cycle of permafrost thaw.

And the counterplan is to aggressively reintroduce as many grazers as possible to restore the ecosystem. The Pleistocene Park is currently a chunk of some 160 km2 with a bunch of imported bison and deer. Their claims of ongoing overt environmental transformation are hard to independently verified - for once, they did pick the cheeks end of nowhere for their park.

But the only thing most people care are the mammoths, and it helps that Republic of Yakutia now has a gene lab dedicated solely to working with animals conserved in permafrost.

[Green Baron]

Science retreats.

... but i am sure they attract tourists and maybe make some money.

I did a short overfly of the "background" link, little in there is actual science.

- Steppe ecosystems did not dominate the planet, only the higher latitudes.

- Animals roles changed grossly. In the north, the end of the Pleistocene saw huge changes, extinctions.

- Animal density actually declined with temperature rise.

- Man was not burdened with defenseless offspring. Man actually caused extinctions through competition at the top of the pyramid.

- Even in the coldest phases landscape was inhabited.

- It is impossible to reconstruct a lost ecosystem. Evolution does not work that way. (Too tired to go through this over and again :-))

- Modern ecosystems are not in a stable condition. Such a thing does not even exist. Modern ecosystems are highly stressed and short befpore or in the course of abrupt changes.

- One can of course increase the number of animals. But these are household animals (wild cows for example don't exist any more) and must be taken care of.

 

I fear, this goes in the wrong direction by pretending that a clock could be turned back, but that is an illusion and does not work.

Sorry to rain on it, but i think "clickbait" is the correct word. At least from a sciency point of view.

 

[kerbiloid]

It's a steppe. It's normal.
 

Spoiler

 

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Sorry to rain on it, but i think "clickbait" is the correct word.

Well, it's survived since 1997, so you could call it... a mammoth among clickbait. 

 

[YNM]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Steppe ecosystems did not dominate the planet, only the higher latitudes.

Yeah, rainforests.

[K^2]

7 hours ago, Green Baron said:

- Steppe ecosystems did not dominate the planet, only the higher latitudes.

Hence the aquatic ape hypothesis. (I'm going to run away really, really fast now.)

[kerbiloid]

11 hours ago, DDE said:

an additional benefit of all the trampled snow being a better insulator, further fortifying the permafrost.

We can use this on the Moon.
Elephants in spacesuits can reinforce the regolith for the future base.
Then they can carry things and so on. The lunar gravity is comfortable for this.

Also they probably can eat the algae from the greenhouses, so this makes things much easier.

Edited December 4, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

5 hours ago, K^2 said:

Hence the aquatic ape hypothesis.

Hey, that's how some of us work !

Edited December 4, 2018 by YNM

[Green Baron]

9 hours ago, K^2 said:

Hence the aquatic ape hypothesis. (I'm going to run away really, really fast now.)

A clear evidence for the hypothesis that humans are persistence runners. Can give us a boost in momentary fitness ...

(I am not advocating this, evolution is a complex thing, just trying to be funny) :-)

Edited December 4, 2018 by Green Baron

[lajoswinkler]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

We can use this on the Moon.
Elephants in spacesuits can reinforce the regolith for the future base.
Then they can carry things and so on. The lunar gravity is comfortable for this.

Also they probably can eat the algae from the greenhouses, so this makes things much easier.

Almost spilled my drink over this. LOL

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

Yeah, I read Ben mezrich’s book Woolly a few months ago, and it’s basically about this. Despite all the enthusiasm for reviving mammoths, it’s really more of a “hey that’s kinda cool” as opposed to something that would produce significant scientific knowledge (or, in this case, be this silver bullet which saves the world from climate change).

Edited December 4, 2018 by Ozymandias_the_Goat

[K^2]

7 hours ago, Green Baron said:

A clear evidence for the hypothesis that humans are persistence runners. Can give us a boost in momentary fitness ...

Of course. Being agile swimmers, our ancestors had experienced significantly more dangers on land. So they had to adapt to crossing vast distances between watersheds very efficiently. It only makes sense for aquatic animals to be goid runners. 

Seriously, though, as a curious human with a mind full of "what if"s, I really like aquatic ape h. It fits so very neatly. As someone trained in a field of science, I have to admit that it's the most ad hoc thing ever, for much the same reason, with no evidence that can't be dismissed as incidental. So yeah, I wasn't serious either.

[Lisias]

35 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Of course. Being agile swimmers, our ancestors had experienced significantly more dangers on land. So they had to adapt to crossing vast distances between watersheds very efficiently. It only makes sense for aquatic animals to be goid runners. 

I swim as a tin soldier, and run as a rock (you have to roll me downhill).

I think my lineage ends with me…  

Edited December 4, 2018 by Lisias
yeah. tyops

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Seriously, though, as a curious human with a mind full of "what if"s, I really like aquatic ape h. It fits so very neatly. As someone trained in a field of science, I have to admit that it's the most ad hoc thing ever, for much the same reason, with no evidence that can't be dismissed as incidental. So yeah, I wasn't serious either.

Seriously, you're alone among paleoanthropologists these days.

It was a nice idea, a hypothesis, initially, never meant to be a foundation or base for anything more. Then it was grabbed thankfully by feminists (nothing against feminists, but please don't use science as an excuse for politics), and today it doesn't have much significance any more. Human (hominidae) evolution took place completely on solid ground or the earlier parts in bushlands/trees, which explains our opposed fingers. There is no more adaptation to aquatic life in humans than in other mammals, maybe even less. Humans usually drown if they haven't learned how to swim. Our teeth and intestines aren't specialized for fishy things or soilent green, there are no webs like other aquatic adaptations have, it is difficult to keep our body temperature in water.

From an archaeological point of view, humans have used aquatic resources when they were at hand, but never specialized, at least not before becoming settled (e.g. mesolitihic/early neolithic kjökkenmöddinger(*)). But that's rather irrelevant for our evolution, it comes and goes.

:-)

(*) funnily there is little information on the internet. It is danish, means ("Kitchen middens") and describes mounds of shells and residuals of seafood in an arrangement that suggests longer stay of foraging or partly sedentary groups, at the early brink of neolithisation, in northern Europe, on the coast in parts of Africa, even Indonesia it think. But still without storage facilities, houses, only little crude pottery is present ...

nevermind :-)

Edited December 4, 2018 by Green Baron

[K^2]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Seriously, you're alone among paleoanthropologists these days.

Well, I'm not one, so it makes it a lot easier for me to like a hypothesis that has very little to do with reality. At no point did I claim to like it because it has any merit.  I completely agree with your points. Purely for arguments sake, I could argue that hominids are adapted to water better than most non-aquatic animals (holding breath, more even fat distribution), but neither are they sufficient by themselves, nor are they unique to aquatic animals. I could use the same arguments to say that sea turtles are well-adapted to high velocity flight for a non-flying animal. And I have to admit, sea turtles flying formation at 300 knots, relying on body-lift of their sleek, aerodynamic shells, is another idea I like very much. Just don't ask me about means of propulsion or power generation for that feat.

But as I've said from beginning, aquatic ape is entirely ad-hoc. Its proponents will keep and try and force the pieces fit, and as more evidence is presented, more and more alterations will have to be made to try and salvage it. Which is a the very mark of a bad hypothesis and good indication that it's entirely false. I don't have to be an anthropologist to recognize a bad ad-hoc hypothesis when I see it, even if I don't understand all the details, and entirely not up to date on the latest batch of evidence against it. I just happen to find the situation humorous, because I don't have to deal with people that take it seriously.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, K^2 said:

I really like aquatic ape h.

They can be real - the Bajau, Moken and Orang Laut.

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

kjökkenmöddinger

*compost

I don't know why eating stuff from the sea is a 'culture' - as if you never done the herrings, cod and pollock...

[kerbiloid]

Got it.
The aquatic humans went out from the sea when it was cold, and it got covered with ice.
Then they evolved on the solid surface (the ice). 

(Then they could get back into the water, but it was cold, so they didn't wish to get wet again.)

Their thumbs got opposed because it was cold, so they were wearing mittens.
You can't wear the mittens comfortably if your thumbs are not opposed.

Spoiler

P.S.
The prehistorical aquahumans also had big ears.

Spoiler

P.P.S.
Hyperborean, the Motherland of humans and hairy elephants.

P.P.P.S.

9 hours ago, Green Baron said:

kjökkenmöddinger(*)

Spoiler

Quote

describes mounds of shells and residuals of seafood in an arrangement that suggests longer stay of foraging or partly sedentary groups

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

_(multipost)

Edited December 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Yes, @kerbiloid, very helpful and intelligent depictions.

Can you imagine that some people try to be serious and share things, and that your annotations can be annoying ? Or ist that your intention ?

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

49 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Yes, @kerbiloid, very helpful and intelligent depictions.

A century later they will call this an archaeological artifact found in a cultural layer. 
Maybe even invent a special term to distinguish from other junk.
As if those shells were something another.

Edited December 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

You have the right to think so, but it is a short sighted view. It might as well be mixed up with stuff from the last hundred thousand of years in a hill at the side of a former road, impossible to isolate as a find category. In one hundred years, nobody will care about an empty can, but in 15.000 or 100.000 years somebody might if it can be found (what i doubt).

Looking at the past tells us more than your depictions suggest, i hope i could transport this view ;-)

Not only human culture. Much of our knowledge of how the biosphere works is derived from looking at the past. And, believe it or not, the piles i mentioned do play a role.

Edited December 5, 2018 by Green Baron

[YNM]

9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Pah.

[kerbiloid]

These soft leaves will never become an artifact, while a tin can carries on top engraved production date and shift number.
Once the future archaeologists find it as an kitchen junk artifact kjökkenmöddinger, they can date the cultural layer with several hours precision.
This can date a whole city contemporary to this "sprat in tomato sauce".

Also they can make conclusions about the metallurgy (the can itself), metal working (again it), polygraphy (if the oiled paper remains), and food ration of a typical low/low-medium class citizen of the dated period.
Also this can clearly shows that the people who created it, was familiar wish fishery, and that tomatoes had been brought to Eastern Europe before this layer had appeared. So, to date a whole agricultural epoch.

If even the newspaper remains, the archaeologists will get a bilingual text (because every second brand in English) and a full picture of that life.

Maybe the will even clone the can owner from his DNA traces in the saliva on the fork.

***

So, we can see that a not squeamish researcher can get a lot of facts even from a kitchen junk of an unknown money-challenged person.
That's what I was trying to illustrate before getting blamed.

Edited December 5, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

34 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That's what I was trying to illustrate before getting blamed.

Because it is wrong and because you put it forward in a manner that is difficult for me to take serious.

Of the can, paper, metal and organic residues will be gone in a short time (years to decades). DNA is kaputt after several months. The residues contain various omnipresent chemistry you'll find as background noise of our civ anywhere. You might find something out about the cleansing stuff of the machine that welded it. Apart from that, there is nothing to read out of there because there is no usable content in there. Believe me, archaeologists sometimes discuss such stuff after the third or fourth beer. Unstable isotopy is broken since the 50s, the stratigraphy in industrial countries mixed up to an unrecognizable mess. Products travel a long way these days, so even if you find a toothbrush or so, you can find it anywhere and that tells you nothing.

We are not talking about 100 years but about >15.000 years. If the can was made out of stone or ceramics, then you had a chance (has been done with stuff up to ~8.000 years old, but not always without critique). A mound of sea shells and invertebrates, stone tools and pottery will still be there if untouched. And here we go: Invertebrates are environmental markers. What's your paper ? Stable isotopes from the shells tell us about climate, temperature and precipitation. The rusted metal shell tells us what ? Residues in a stone vessel, protected from throughflow of humid acids etc., might be analyzable (rarely, but sometimes), but on a chunk of soil with traces of rusted metal you'll find anything that has flown through there in the past 15.000 years. But most probably it'll just be gone without a trace.

Hope you understand me now ;-)

Edited December 5, 2018 by Green Baron

[YNM]

42 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

These soft leaves will never become an artifact, while a tin can carries on top engraved production date and shift number.

And be a pollutant. And kill the ecosystem.

We already have too much pollutant of those kinds... not exactly that one.

Future archeologist (which will have to come from elsewhere than Earth itself) will have plenty to learn about how the apes killed themselves and everything around it.

 

__________

So, leaves better ? (@Green Baron)

Edited December 5, 2018 by YNM