What You Need To Colonize Dinosaur World

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Once we bring terrestrial predators and rodents, the dinos of any size have no chances.

Poaceae are self-pollinated, they don;t need pollinators.

Doesn't follow.  Current terrestrial predators didn't have to compete with dino predators (possible exception: moas of New Zealand).  Rodents have proven brutal for just about any ecosystem previously missing them, and odds are they would be harsh on dinos (although primitive rodent-like mammals coexisted with dinos for millions of years and didn't appear to thrive like you'd expect).

Dino evolution: 165 million years (not including birds)
Mammal evolution (post dino): 65 million years

It is foolish to assume "newer == better", when the dinos had so much more time to optimize to their environment (but I wouldn't bet against rodents.  They are especially lethal against modern dinos and responsible for plenty of bird extinction).  Also, you'd probably want to bring a full suite of invasive species.  It isn't so much that "invasive == dangerous", but if you throw a whole ecosystem's worth of species at a new ecosystem, you are bound to get a few species better adapted for at least few niches than existing ones.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Doesn't follow.  Current terrestrial predators didn't have to compete with dino predators (possible exception: moas of New Zealand).  Rodents have proven brutal for just about any ecosystem previously missing them, and odds are they would be harsh on dinos (although primitive rodent-like mammals coexisted with dinos for millions of years and didn't appear to thrive like you'd expect).

Follows.

Current predators have defeated the dino defeaters. As you can see, just NZ, Australia, and several other such places were too far to be occupied by cats&dogs.

The rodent brutality plays no role in teh drama, they may be plushy as toys. Let it be mice and hamsters.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Dino evolution: 165 million years (not including birds)
Mammal evolution (post dino): 65 million years

Dino evolution: 165 million years (not including birds)
Flowering plants evolution: 140 million years.
Mammal evolution (post dino): 65 million years
Grass evolution: 55 million years.

As you can see, the dinos were happily living for 100 mln years before the mammals appeared, and much less after, and got extinct once the mammals got the grass.
The grass has finished the dinos leaving them no chance, it will clean them off from any other planet as well, once we bring the rodents and cats & dogs.

Dinos can eat any type of plants, including the flowering ones and grass.
Like the big mammals, the big dinos can digest just the green mass, and get enough energy from it.
Small dinos are insectivorous, the green mass is not enough generous for them.
The same are the primitive mammals. Like the dinos, they have primitive conical teeth, enough to catch a worm or a dragonfly. But ferns, giving no fruits or grains, are too poor with calories for them.

The fruit trees are edible for both dinos and mammals, so they won't help us.

But 55 mln some flowering trees have degraded down to a single offset with a flower on top. They didn't grow up to the full size, but they got a neotenic form, we call the "grass".
The best of them give many big and hard seeds we call "grains", and we call such grass "crops". The best of them ar Poaceae _{(Look! I've written this without a vocabulary!)}.

So, we'll seed the Poaceae crops on the planet, like it happened ~60 mln years ago on the Earth.
We'll do this because we eat them (wheat, rice, etc).

***

Once the crops start growing everywhere, the primitive, insectivorous but hungry, mammals started eating the grains.
Some of them quickly evolved into rodents, their teeth got optimized to chew the grains.

We don't need to wait, we already have the ready-to-use mice out of box.
So, we just put the mice into the rice and wait.

***

The smallest dinos will probably try to eat the crops, too, but this doesn't matter.
What matters is that the mice atay warm all the night long, until the next day, while small dinos cool down and get sleepy before the dawn.

This allows our rodents to get out and eat at the dawn, before the predating dinos get active.
With their specialized teeth they have a better dish.
So, we can be calm about our rodents, they will overpopulate the grassy places of the planet very soon.

***

And they are natural food for cats & dogs.
We bring and release the cats & dogs.

The cats & dogs stay warm all night long, too. So, they can hide and get active at the dawn, like the mammal rodents.
They will hunt and eat the rodents everywhere they live, and will soon populate the whole planet as well.

The cats & dogs can't withstand a fight against a raptor, but they don't need this to win.

***

Almost all dinos reproduce by eggs. Viviparous dinos are rare.
The biggest viviparous land dinos are hen-sized.
The biggest viviparous sea dinos are orca-sized, but we can deal about them later.

The egg can't be too thick, as the chicken couldn't break it.
The egg can't be too large, as it will crush itself.
As a result, the greatest dinos had eggs of the ostrich egg size. Usually even smaller.

As a result, all those -raptors, -saurs, -ceratopses, -dons, etc., bring chicken-sized chickens.

As the dinochicken is small, it can't stay warm till the dawn.
As the dinochicken is usually bu orders of magnitode smaller than its parents, the parents hardly can protect him at the dawn, even if the parents stay warm and active.

***

So, at the dawn, when all small reptiles are sleepy, including the dinochickens of all dinospecies, the rodents get out from holes to eat the crops.
The cats & dogs get out to hunt the rodents.
As the cats & dogs are not racists, they equally appreciate a prey of any types and species. So, between with the rodents they actively eat the dinochickens.
(Maybe they are even sure that they are real chickens, and get pretty surprised that the dinochickens have no feathers).

***

As a result, the dino chicken population gets devastated by cats & dogs.
As the dinos are big, it takes a lot of time for them to reproduce again. While cats & dogs keep doing this every dawn.

The dino population stops reproducing (as the chickens stop surviving enough long to grow).
It gets smaller and degrades, genetic diseases enforce the extinction process.

***

Meanwhile the flowering plants occupies every piece of land, while ferns can live only close to the water.
The flowering plants occupy the planet, leaving the ferns, pines, and palms at the palces where the flowering plants hardly can survive.

The reptiles get defeated and eaten by cats & dogs, and like here on the Earth they either become toxic lurkers afraid of every sound, or hide in bogs (before the highest mammals come with guns),

The mammals establish laws against the reptile final elimination, and even encage the mammals who violates this.

So, the brave and beautiful mammals replace the primitive reptiles once they can start farming crops on the planet.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

It is foolish to assume "newer == better"

It's the mainstream of the evolution. More and more complicated and adaptable species appear, replacing more primitive prior ones.

Now we have 8 billion of sapient apes, herding tens millions of horses and cows, about ten billions sheep and goats, feeding hundreds of millions cats & dogs.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Also, you'd probably want to bring a full suite of invasive species. 

I just listed the competition winners, our best companions, and most numerous species.

Of course, we can bring elephants, but only when the dinos get gone.

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

if you throw a whole ecosystem's worth of species at a new ecosystem, you are bound to get a few species better adapted for at least few niches than existing ones.

Only if the local species are at least same evolved as our domestic species.
Dinos aren't. Even if an adult dino is, its chickens are its weak place.

Mammals have won the competition for a reason. The fuzzy fluffies are better killers than the overgrown lizards.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Scotius]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Once we bring terrestrial predators and rodents, the dinos of any size have no chances.

Poaceae are self-pollinated, they don;t need pollinators.

Now now Dinosaurs coexisted with mammalian terrestrial predators and proto-rodents through their entire era - and did just fine. Remember, dinosaur doesn't mean exclusively "multi-ton cumbersome giant reptile". There were small, quick predators in the Theropoda family that probably specialized in hunting small, quick prey hiding in the undergrowth.

[kerbiloid]

34 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Dinosaurs coexisted with mammalian terrestrial predators and proto-rodents through their entire era - and did just fine. Remember, dinosaur doesn't mean exclusively "multi-ton cumbersome giant reptile". There were small, quick predators in the Theropoda family that probably specialized in hunting small, quick prey hiding in the undergrowth.

Until the grass had occupied all the Earth, giving grains. Some insectivorous mammals became rodents, some became "ferrets".
And the dinosaurs scheme have irremediable disadvantages:
1) Eggs make all chickens equal. Equal to a chicken.
2) Weak to no thermoregulation. The cow-sized and bigger ones were inertially warm-blooded due ro heat capacity, smaller ones sometimes had feathers or other primitive countermeasures.
(Btw were the dinos shaking when feeling cold?)
So, the chickens had neither of that, and were cold-blooded until getting grown.
3) Dinos are huge, their chicken are tiny. And unlike the crocodiles, they couldn't just let them gather in mouth. So, an adult dino hardly could rotect its chickens.

While the small mammals duet of "mice" and "ferrets" was 24/7, enough large to kill a sleepy chicken, and had perfect night feelings, useless for cold-blooded dinos.

So, the final of the dinos and mammals history should have a title "A Deadly Dawn: The Death From Grass".

[Spacescifi]

8 hours ago, Nightside said:

As @Spacescifi hinted up thread, you could get a jump start on evolution by bringing fruit crops, which are more edible to humans than most plants. The downside of this is that since these are the only flowering plants on the world there would be no native pollinators. You’d have to bring your own. 

 

Well... two more factors plus more I likely am unaware of.

1. Weather... will be different than it is in modern times. For example, antartica had grass! It was not frozen.

Also bugs.

They will be a problem. Dragonflies grew as large as small birds due to the high oxygen content.

Now mix modern imported rotting fruit crops and GIANT flies hopped up on oxygen.

Add easy combustion when humans begin the process of industrialization.

Fire hazard. Super big bug pests. And T-rex.

Still sounds interesting... but anyone still wanna sign up to be a colonist for dino world?

Edited June 24, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Scotius]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Until the grass had occupied all the Earth, giving grains. Some insectivorous mammals became rodents, some became "ferrets".
And the dinosaurs scheme have irremediable disadvantages:
1) Eggs make all chickens equal. Equal to a chicken.
2) Weak to no thermoregulation. The cow-sized and bigger ones were inertially warm-blooded due ro heat capacity, smaller ones sometimes had feathers or other primitive countermeasures.
(Btw were the dinos shaking when feeling cold?)
So, the chickens had neither of that, and were cold-blooded until getting grown.
3) Dinos are huge, their chicken are tiny. And unlike the crocodiles, they couldn't just let them gather in mouth. So, an adult dino hardly could rotect its chickens.

While the small mammals duet of "mice" and "ferrets" was 24/7, enough large to kill a sleepy chicken, and had perfect night feelings, useless for cold-blooded dinos.

So, the final of the dinos and mammals history should have a title "A Deadly Dawn: The Death From Grass".

Grasses didn't really start spreading until well into Cenozoic, long after the demise of dinosaurs. Meanwhile multituberculate mammals had rodent-like teeth much earlier.

I do not deny that egg predation was a significant part of dino hatchlings mortality rate. But if every nest would be raided, no bird, turtle or crocodile would be alive today. Species either lay less eggs but watch over their brood, or lay more smaller eggs and go for quantity instead of quality.

Growth rates, bone structure and yes, feathers convinced most of paleontologists that dinosaurs were in fact warm-blooded. As in, they actively produced body heat via their own metabolism. Size and feather helped with preservation of that heat, but the same goes for many mammals today.

Yes, hatchlings were vulnerable. But they dealt with that risk by growing fast (which actually requires endothermy to "fuel" high growth rate). Or were protected by their parents. Yes, some dinosaurs actually brooded their eggs - of which we have fossilized evidence. It stands to reason this protection extended to chicks, until they were big and independent enough to survive on their own.

After Wikipedia:

"Several oviraptorosaurian nests are known, with several oviraptorid specimens preserved in a brooding position over large clutches of up to a dozen or more eggs. The eggs are usually arranged in pairs, and forming a circular pattern within the nest. One oviraptorosaurian specimen from China has been found with two unlaid eggs within the pelvic canal. This suggests that, unlike modern crocodilians, oviraptorosaurs did not produce and lay many eggs at the same time. Rather, the eggs were produced within the reproductive organs in pairs, and laid two at a time, with the mother positioned in the center of the nest and rotating in a circle as each pair was laid. This behavior is supported by the fact that the eggs were shaped like highly elongated ovals, with the more pointed end pointing backward from the cloaca, and also oriented toward the center of the nest.^[16] Geochemical analysis also revealed that oviraptorosaurs incubated their eggs in the 35–40 °C (95–104 °F) range, as many modern bird species do today, based on the oxygen isotope ratios in the bones of the fossil embryos of various species during development.^[17]

The presence of two shelled eggs within the birth canal shows that oviraptorosaurs were intermediate between the reproductive biology of crocodilians and modern birds. Like crocodilians, they had two oviducts. However, crocodilians produce multiple shelled eggs per oviduct at a time, whereas oviraptorosaurs, like birds, produced only one egg per oviduct at a time."

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

Grasses didn't really start spreading until well into Cenozoic, long after the demise of dinosaurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenozoic

Quote

The Paleogene spans from the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, 66 million years ago,

Exactly. Grasses and the Age of Mammals came together.

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

Meanwhile multituberculate mammals had rodent-like teeth much earlier.

Yes, the rodent-like teeth are universal, and once the grain had appeared gave a significant advantage.
Did many dinos have non-conical teeth?

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

I do not deny that egg predation was a significant part of dino hatchlings mortality rate.

Not egg. Chicken.
A compact heap of eggs still can be guarded. A pack of chicken-sized chickens not so much.
Reptiles can guard their eggs, but the safari starts when the turtlings and croclings get out and start spreading around.

Crocodiles at least can guard their chickens because they are tiny compared to dinos, because they are always close to the ground, and because they crawl and swim, not run.
Also they live in water, which temperature is more stable.
End even then, crocos hide their chickens in mouth.

While a croco-sized raptor can hardly herd his chickens who are running around, cool all the night, and stun by the dawn, when the blood-thirsty little plushies get out from holes to hunt and feeling absolutely comfy thanks to their warm blood.
A ferret-sized dino can't keep his blood warm (if he still can, we know him as bird), he just doesn't have such effective thermoregulation system.
And ALL dinos, including the hugest ones, have chicken-sized chickens, exactly like the ferret prefers.

(I mentioned cats in the colonization setting, irl they appeared when dinos had already gone, so the natural example is ferret.
Just if colonize a planet, the cats are more preferrable as they are domesticated.)
 

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

But if every nest would be raided, no bird, turtle or crocodile would be alive today. Species either lay less eggs but watch over their brood, or lay more smaller eggs and go for quantity instead of quality.

Snakes and lizards also.

And look at this list. All survivors are either tiny lurking crawlers (including even the crocodiles), or water species (mammals are mostly land forms, they are not big in water), or live in trees/rocks.
Almost all of them, except crocos and turtles, have 2-3 chickens at once, and protect them.
Even the biggest birds make their nests in the most far and hardly available parts of landscape.

And can you recall any field reptile except the lurkers-crawlers, comparable to the cats, wolves or lions?

Ok, say brontos were killed by meteorite or so. But what was the problem for croco-sized raptors? Their big bro disappeared, they could feel big.
But no, everybody who didn't hide like snakes, crocodiles, birds, etc,, got extinct.

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

Growth rates, bone structure and yes, feathers convinced most of paleontologists that dinosaurs were in fact warm-blooded. As in, they actively produced body heat via their own metabolism. Size and feather helped with preservation of that heat, but the same goes for many mammals today.

Adult or teenage dinosaurs, much bigger than a dinochicken.

Of course, it's important to eat the dinochicken before it gets ostrich-sized.

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

But they dealt with that risk by growing fast

But they still needed time to grow. And until that they are cool stunned vulnerable targets by the dawn, who can't escape like a bird from a warm-blooded night hunter.
So, there is a 2-3 hours of feast time at the dawn.

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

Yes, some dinosaurs actually brooded their eggs

No problems with the eggs. Chickens. Spreading around and stunning where they got cooled, an easy prey from any side.

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

It stands to reason this protection extended to chicks, until they were big and independent enough to survive on their own.

And irl we can see that only those reptile survived, who hides in hardly available places, keeps jaws close to the chickens, and either is comparable to the chicken, or brings hundreds of them to get several ones survived.

None of the listed is about the dinosaurs, and no survived dinosaurs around.

Edited June 25, 2020 by kerbiloid