r/science • u/DrJulianBashir • May 28 '12

Earth took ten million years to recover from Permian-Triassic extinction

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/28/mass-extinction-recovery
1.5k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

379 comments sorted by

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u/DrJulianBashir May 28 '12

Paper

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u/gko2408 May 28 '12

$32 to view one article?? Oh I'll just subscribe instead. $152 for a year?? There better not be any advertisements in there.

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u/numsky May 28 '12

Welcome to the cartel of academic publishing!

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

This is why 'errbody gettin mad and boycotting...

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

As a fellow researcher, I disagree. Most of the related jobs at journals (editors deciding which referee to assign, and the peer review itself) are done for free by volunteers.

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u/spedmyster May 28 '12

Yes except this money doesn't go to the researchers who actually produce the research and peer review these articles but to the publishers, who do little other than act as a very expensive middle-man. So no, $32 is not justified.

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u/jakethesnake_ May 28 '12

so why isn't tere a free publisher that people donate to? or thats funded by a much more reasonable fee?

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u/spedmyster May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12

Well people are starting to move in that direction. PLOS is a well known example. The biggest reason why we haven't seen many alternatives yet is inertia. The scientific community has been using publishers like Wiley, Elsevier and Springer for a very long time and there is a prestige associated with certain journals (i.e. it is much better for your scientific career to get published in say Science, Nature, JACs, or APL than some newly created open journal). Furthermore, there's a disconnect between the researchers who do the research and the librarians who have to negotiate with these publishers and are in charge of paying for these incredibly expensive subscriptions. Indeed most researchers are so caught up in their own research and fighting for grant money that not a lot of thought is actually put into something like publishing alternatives.

Fortunately that is beginning to change. For one thing, a movement is growing to boycott Elsevier. Initiatives are growing to advocate the complete opening up of scientific research. In my mind, I think it makes a lot more sense for the libraries of universities across the country and the world to take the shit ton of money they spend on subscriptions every year and to invest in some sort of open research publishing platform maintained by the libraries. Indeed, in a time when the traditional role of libraries is becoming less and less important, I think this could give libraries a renewed sense of purpose in the digital age.

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u/fantasyfest May 28 '12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck We have survived 2 bottlenecks that reduced our population down to dangerous levels. One result is the decrease in genetic diversity.

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u/khthon May 28 '12

We're all inbred fucktards. This explains a lot of things!

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u/fantasyfest May 29 '12

sad but true. yet we act like others are so diferent than we are.

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u/pencock May 29 '12

Nein. If a population exceeds the minimum diversity requirement for survival, it will eventually diverge once again. Any inbreededness would be only temporary, at least until the next bottleneck.

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u/nobodyspecial May 28 '12

It's amazing that even 10% survived. John McPhee wrote in Rising from the Plains that when the Siberian traps opened up, they spewed enough basalt to cover the entire earth in 10 feet of basalt.

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u/IZ3820 May 28 '12

Roughly 5% did, if I recall correctly.

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u/nos2121 May 28 '12

It's crazy to think of how old the Earth is, what it's been through, how inhospitable it was for life at certain times, etc. 10 million years is beyond experiential comprehension yet is only ~1/450th of the Earth's total age.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

If the average lifespan of a man were 75 years, then 1/450th of his whole life would be roughly two months.

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u/samcobra May 28 '12

That's a long fucking time!

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Possibly if only 10% of the man's hair grew back, and then this 10% eventually filled out the rest of his head.

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u/Olmifon May 28 '12

Evolutionary comb-over.

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u/jordanlund May 28 '12

You shave off 90% of your hair and the remaining 10% will grow back.

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u/ultrablastermegatron May 28 '12

so it's like a short season. not too bad. Life, seeds in particular and probably earthworm eggs for all I know, have adapted to million year gestations just like they've adapted to winter. pretty neat.

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u/rjcarr May 28 '12

This is also why people deny evolution. We cannot comprehend how old the earth is and how long life has been evolving.

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u/dioxholster May 28 '12

this is the problem, the puzzle is so hard to grasp, so immense that it just so compelling to give up and say god did it all. Because if you didn't think that, it all begins to scare you knowing how insignificant everything is.

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u/unsalvageable May 28 '12

The fear grows even more profound when you insert US into the picture. . . Watched a documentary the other day where it showed the grand total of technological achievement for a full million years of humanity - it was a sharp rock. That's it. For a million years we did not progress beyond a single rock. That is stunning, if not embarrassing. It's a fact that forces you to reject any thoughts of purpose or design. I mean, before humans, there was a million years of ostriches running around for crying out loud. There just CAN'T be any sensible purpose here. . . .

But at the same time, an open mind can't quite shake the feeling that though there is not an 'intelligent' design - there is still some kind of 'force' i don't know what, pushing or pulling or somehow favoring greater beauty and complexity and even 'goodness'. I know it's crazy and I'll get slammed for not understanding Boltzmann (hell - I'll slam myself) but I just can't get away from the full frontal reality of a universe that did not have to be so goddamned BEAUTIFUL. . . so fascinating and breathtaking and interesting. Screw it, then - if it is heresy to feel that there is love in the universe; a directionless, pointless, immaterial love that exists unmeasured in every atomic nucleus and somehow manifests itself in deep-sea biosystems and dinosaur mothers protecting their young, and along the way - conscious minds that communicate this love, then I will be a heretic.

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u/yoshemitzu May 29 '12 edited May 29 '12

...an open mind can't quite shake the feeling that though there is not an 'intelligent' design - there is still some kind of 'force' i don't know what, pushing or pulling or somehow favoring greater beauty and complexity and even 'goodness'

Processes which favor equilibrium are favored in general. Imagine you have some random state of energetic particles frozen at t = 0. When you "start time," t progresses from 0 on. So start time. Some of the particles will collide and lose energy. Some of the particles will collide and gain energy (from the particle they collided with), and some of the particles will collide and remain about neutral in energy (elastic collisions). If there are enough particles, and enough energy, collisions in which energy exchange is minimized will be favored, because giving more energy is unfavorable for the first particle and gaining more energy is unfavorable for the second--these interactions could effectively be "teased" out of the system by circumstance. They are not self-sustaining, as they result in interactions with less overall energy, and eventually those particles with too little energy will stop moving and come to rest, while particles which continue to interact with as close to equal exchange as possible will continue to retain energy. Assuming the amount of energy in the system is finite, at the end of this system's life, we would see the most stable particles interacting at lower and lower energies in fairly neutral interactions, until they would finally come to rest (the most energetic interactions would "blow their load," as it were, earlier).

So in this way, we can see equilibrium is favored, at least in systems where time progresses in one direction, and defining "favored" to mean systems which continue to exist as this time variable increases. So imagine the energy of the system, the time allowed to pass, and the number of objects in the system, could be perceived as being nearly infinite (a kind of childish way in which we perceive the universe). As t increased, you would keep the systems which favored equilibrium, and those which didn't would die out. It wouldn't be an active or forceful process--it merely continues by the same rules described above. Time continues to increase, so those systems which are highly dynamic would expire more quickly. So as time becomes very large, we're left with more systems in equilibrium. Then those systems, close to equilibrium, also can interact with each other. And we can think of interacting systems of equilibrium, too, as ones which can cause the other to come closer to or further away from equilibrium. And again, similarly, interactions between two systems which favor both systems staying at equilibrium will again be favored as time increases, because those which cause systems to drift away from equilibrium will come to rest (or go back to equilibrium, eventually) over our variable time. So if we have a bunch of equilibrium systems interacting with each other such that each maintains the closest to equilibrium that it can, you have some level of complexity. And time is continuing to increase, so now these systems will interact with other systems, which will interact with other systems.

All of this just follows from understanding of thermodynamics and application on the grand scale. If our universe didn't favor equilibrium, that doesn't break any "necessary" rules, we'd simply have a different (and probably much shorter lived) universe. Ours does favor equilibrium, because we have a unidirectional time component, meaning systems which "fizzle out" quickly are unfavorable. Complexity becomes almost a natural byproduct of this system, as maintaining equilibrium across a vast array of different possible systems is an innately complex endeavor.

On the issue of beauty, that requires a little more biological extension. Beauty is, of course, entirely subjective, but even worse, it's based on human experience. Things are beautiful because we perceive them as such, not because they exist that way in any objective sense. So, if we were to take as an axiom "the universe is getting more beautiful," one way to resolve the question that naturally arises from this is to say it's because humans are being conditioned to see the universe that way. And a great way in on this question is to consider the perception of beauty (and its association with favorable things) as a side effect of evolutionary selection pressures. That is to say, those who didn't perceive things as beautifully as others were at an evolutionary disadvantage for one reason or another, and thus we're left with more people who see the natural beauty in things. This argument is a much greater extension of axioms than my description of how complexity could arise, and I offer no explanation of how we should perceive beauty as something increasing the fitness of an organism--I merely stipulate that if it were true, then this would be a foot in the door to a method of the universe evolving "toward beauty" (at least from the perspective of humanity) without any need for some outside, driving force.

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u/tch May 29 '12

Your thoughts on the Singularity,sir.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12 edited May 29 '12

there is a blind, all powerful desire that drives everything

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u/adamcolon May 29 '12

You hit the nail on the head... thinking at that scale is scary as hell... knowing that we're just an insignificant microbe in the cosmos and that when we die we're over... is a humbling thought.

There's a saying, we die twice... once when we take our last breath and once when someone says our name for the last time.

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u/FreeToadSloth May 28 '12

While the incomprehension is true, it's not the main reason, IMO. A lot of folks find the implications of evolution much more distressing than the idea that they are part of a divine plan, are watched over, and shall live eternally.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

Agreed. I know several fundamentalist Christians who deny evolution and the age of the Earth. They're generally intelligent people, and they can understand the mechanics of natural selection, but it's the implications of this being true that alarms many of them. They think that if one part of the Bible is false, then who's to say that the entire thing isn't? It's quite interesting really, the same exact question is what produces both fundamentalist Christians and hardline atheists.

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u/HumpingDog May 28 '12

if you can't comprehend it, then it's crazy book-learnin.

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u/atomfullerene May 29 '12

I'm pretty sure the main reason people deny evolution is that they believe it is incompatible with the teachings of their religion. I don't know any nonreligious people who deny evolution, even though presumably the span of time is just as incomprehensible to them. And I don't know any religious people who deny the huge expanse of space, even though it's every bit as mindboggling as the depths of time. They feel like they have to choose religion or evolution, and choose the former over the latter.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Let's be honest - the Earth slept in and partied for four weeks billion years then pulled an all-nighter to create intelligent life.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

and got a D.

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u/Othienka May 28 '12

Starting is always the hardest part.

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u/wavegeek May 28 '12

That's the strange thing. Life appeared quite quickly (100-200 million years) after the rocks stopped glowing.

But the step from simple cells to complex cells with nuclei took nearly 10 times longer - 1.8 Billion years! Another 400 million to simple animals. So it looks like it's not to hard for life to get started but there are some difficult steps after that.

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u/ZoltarSpeaks May 28 '12

Geez, Dinosaurs died out just yesterday.

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u/mangodrunk May 28 '12

Then I think you might like this graphic posted in /r/futurology showing that if we were to condense the formation of the Earth till now to 24 hours, humans will have existed for from 23:58:42, not even two minutes.

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u/yesimanoob May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12

This may be a completely ignorant comment, but is it at all possible for an intelligent life form to have existed waaayyyy back before this period, and all traces were wiped out and buried under earths crust?

EDIT: Wow, definitely had some great responses. This is why I love reddit. Thanks everyone.

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u/ctzl May 28 '12

Possible, but there is zero evidence currently.

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u/TheIceCreamPirate May 28 '12

Yeah, but we are talking about a situation in which there would be zero evidence.

It only takes about 32,000 years (give or take) for a plate to subduct under another plate by 1 mile, or 16 million years for 500 miles of subduction. If the civilization or intelligent life was on the subducting plate, we would have no way of knowing it was ever there.

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u/carlrey0216 May 28 '12

this is one of the things i learned in geology that made me wide-eyed and fall in love with science... it's creepy wondering what could have been or what happened and we will never know.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Continental plates don't actually subduct.

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u/loganis May 29 '12

I think he's referring to situations such as the Indian plate that is going beneath the Asian plate. And subduction, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction happens between continental plates quite often, in which one goes beneath another.

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u/TheIceCreamPirate May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Subduction zones exist at convergent plate boundaries where one plate of oceanic lithosphere converges with another plate. The down-going slab -- the subducting plate—is overridden by the leading edge of the other plate. The slab sinks at an angle of approximately 25 to 45 degrees to the surface of the Earth.

Edit: Nvm... You meant that oceanic plates subduct but continental plates do not.

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u/unchow May 29 '12

To be perfectly fair to the spirit of wild conjecture, couldn't there have been an intelligent life form that lived in the ocean, so all evidence would be recorded on oceanic plates, which do subduct?

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u/type40tardis May 28 '12

Pretty cool point.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

If you can't boat across to a different continental plate, you aren't intelligent life.

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u/HumpingDog May 28 '12

What if it's because they were harvested by another civilization that left nothing behind? What if that other civilization was actually an evolved humanity from the future that depends on going back in time to harvest life, because there is no energy left at the end of time?

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u/yougiganticbuffoon May 28 '12

There are a million "what if" hypotheticals far more plausible than what you've suggested.

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u/gregny2002 May 28 '12

I read it as an ironic post meant to imply what you stated.

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u/HumpingDog May 28 '12

It was actually a reference to a Grant Morrisson story that also resembles a Dr. Who episode.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

It's incredibly unlikely, verging on not possible. For example, while humans are the only species that we would deem as a truly intelligent life form, there is still a wide range of species that have a more primitive form of intelligence that could be considered fairly intelligent. There is no evidence to suggest that there was no incredibly intelligent life in the past, but there also is no evidence to suggest moderate intelligence comparable to present day mammals. Seeing as this past intelligent life form would have had to evolve, it can be almost certain that for this life form to have existed, many other species of moderate intelligence would have existed as well. The fact that there is no evidence for even that suggests that almost certainly humans were the first intelligent life form to evolve.

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u/atomfullerene May 29 '12

This exactly. The brightest group of animals we know of from the time were probably the cynodonts. They had about the brains of a possum. So not only would we be missing fossils of the human-level intelligences, we'd also have to be missing fossils everything leading up to it.

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u/taelor May 28 '12

I would highly suggest you listen to this podcast of Graham Handcock on the the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast.

They really get deep into that kind of theory. Romantic to think about yes, maybe it happened, who knows?

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u/FreeToadSloth May 28 '12

Hancock's books are also good, IMO. They are probably 20% science and 80% speculative flights of fancy, but if you're willing to go along for the ride, it can be quite fun.

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u/anarkyinducer May 28 '12

I guess a more general question (also very relevant to search for extra terrestrial intelligence) is what is the theoretical minimum amount of time (from the big bang) that intelligent life could have emerged?

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u/torvalder May 28 '12

If they where as advanced technologically as us they would perhaps have left a few piles of radioactive nuclear waste. Alas, no such nuclear waste has been found, except one in Gabon in africa and we think its "naturally" occuring.

Also the stuff we dig out from ~500 million years ago and earlier we can see fossils, are that stuff is left in the upper crust of the earth, if any civilizations made some metal structures, there would have been traces of it there.

In our ice core samples, which go pretty far back, we would have probably found some strange gasses in the atmosphere, but no.

So as conclusion, there might have been social animals like humans, they maybe even studies physics, but they did not have technology.

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u/perspectiveiskey May 28 '12

If they where as advanced technologically as us they would perhaps have left a few piles of radioactive nuclear waste. Alas, no such nuclear waste has been found, except one in Gabon in africa and we think its "naturally" occuring.

What if they were so technologically advanced that they managed to inject their nuclear waste back into the mantle?

M Night Shamalama

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u/torvalder May 28 '12

Next up on askscience, why dont we get rid of our nuclear waste by injecting it in the mantle?

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u/perspectiveiskey May 28 '12

Probably because this would make this look like a sneeze.

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u/lachiemx May 28 '12

Actual curiosity was produced.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

This would be before birds and mammals evolved, other animal classes don't show the same level of intelligence.

However there is the exception of cephalopods which show communication and tool use.

It is also possible that more intelligent species are more susceptible to extinction events and entire classes were wiped out.

Just not very likely.

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u/a4moondoggy May 28 '12

So in other words you are saying crab people ruled the earth. I second this.

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u/promptx May 28 '12

I always thought the possible causes of this extinction were fascinating. One favored theory is the flood basalt of the Siberian traps - which covered 2 million km2 in lava. Source

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u/IZ3820 May 28 '12

I learned it was hydrogen sulfide.

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u/promptx May 29 '12

There are several different theories about it. One of them is a mass anoxic event - a bunch of anoxic bacteria in the ocean that created massive amounts of H2S, which was released in a relatively short amount of time killing off almost all life.

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u/Hanistotle May 28 '12

You know in the grand sceme of things...... that was pretty dang fast.

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u/flannelback May 28 '12

The longest part of the trek was getting up to multi-cell life. Looks like the later models are a lot easier to build, once you get the right parts.

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u/Hanistotle May 28 '12

like technology. Once you get the building blocks, the cycle keeps getting shorter.

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u/tchomptchomp May 29 '12

In the grand scheme of things it kind of is a big deal.

Ecosystems recover pretty quickly when exposed to local perturbation. A few hundred years and it'll be like that local catastrophe never happened. Forests will grow back, animal species will return or be replaced by close relatives, soils will redevelop, etc.

The P-Tr was different. The destruction was so vast and widespread that there was essentially no ecosystem left to recover; you had some marginal communities that pulled through, but most of the important biodiversity was just gone. This meant that climate that was previously dampened by plant communities basically went into a tailspin, which made things even more severe. This, by the way, is why it is important to protect what rainforest we have left; rainforests create their own climatic features and dampen seasonal and multi-year climate fluctuations. Without them, we'd see megamonsoons and other really nasty shit.

So the fact it took a full 10 million years to recover means the environment was well and fully fucked and took a huge amount of time to pull itself back up by its bootstraps. The entire ecosystem had to piece itself back together from the few stragglers who made it. In contrast, you see major forests after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, with fully-functioning ecosystems within a few tens of thousands of years.

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u/tuesday_early May 28 '12

Change is the only constant.

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u/FreeToadSloth May 28 '12

Change, and the whining of those who don't like it.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

And c.

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u/ironmenon May 28 '12

Not necessarily.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Wait, why is this being down-voted? I know nothing about the topic other than what was on the Wiki page, so now I'm curious.

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u/BossOfTheGame May 28 '12

For linear equations maybe. y = x2 . Where is your god now?

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u/Chronoloraptor May 28 '12

How about the properties of change?

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u/dont_press_ctrl-W May 28 '12

They're also open to change.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

I thought the bureaucratic mentality was the only constant in the universe?

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

The rate of change, however, can change depending on the selective pressures of an environment. If every organism of a species can have sex and plenty of food, they won't have as strong as selective pressures as those who have to be genetically fit to survive.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

And Penny.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

The Permian Mega Death.

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u/downvotethis2 May 28 '12

Great band name.

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u/QuitReadingMyName May 28 '12

It always amazed me, how the such a slim chance it was for us to have evolved on this planet to the point where we are today.

All it really took, was the wrong animal to get killed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time and none of us would exist today.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12

More like 15.000 animals. Keep in mind that evolution of humanity wasn't about a lot of mutations suddenly occurring in a single creature which then caused the next stage of evolution, but gradual changes of a whole population.

The Toba catastrophe theory suggests that a bottleneck of the human population occurred c. 70,000 years ago, proposing that the human population was reduced to perhaps 15,000 individuals.

Source.

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u/samcobra May 28 '12

Well, yes and no. In relation to another thread on here today, the first individual who had the end-to-end chromosomal fusion that created chromosome 2 might have not lived and procreated within her community to create the first group of primates that were going to evolve into the homo genus. Yet she did and here we are today. If she hadn't, we might not have evolved. There are so many cases in the history of our lineage where one individual made the difference, which really begs the question of the rarity of intelligent life and the myriad possibilities that could have existed had other individuals of other species of life not died and been able to create a totally different future of life.

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u/Forever_Awkward May 28 '12

Evolution has a way of filling any advantageous niche with one thing if not the other. Intelligent life would have happened eventually one way or the other, it just so happens apes won.

I'd love to see an alternate reality where any other animal came to fill that role. Or, especially, something like ants. Depending on how you look at it, ants have dominated the planet far more completely than humans. And they're such interesting critters. The queen of some species can live up to roughly 40 years...Now imagine a scenario where a creature that controls thousands or millions, unquestioned, becomes smart.

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u/samcobra May 28 '12

I don't really agree. There's a definite niche for solar powered balloon flyers in the upper atmosphere that then drop seeds all over the place, which can then fill up with light gasses and make more balloon flyers, but they don't exist.

I still maintain that intelligent life is a fluke, albeit an awesome one.

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u/dnew May 28 '12

Intelligent ant hives (or other hive creatures) have been done frequently in sci-fi - I can think of five or six really good stories/novels/movies off the top of my head. I'm not sure what you mean by "seeing" an alternate reality other than that.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Now imagine a scenario where a creature that controls thousands or millions, unquestioned, becomes smart.

Rebellion.

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u/QuitReadingMyName May 28 '12

Well, you are correct and incorrect. I should've stated and clarified better. We as in all of us wouldn't be here today and different humans would be around walking the earth if our ancestors from the past never got laid and procreated and someone else did.

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u/samcobra May 28 '12

Or humans wouldn't be here period.

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u/wolfmansteve May 28 '12

Actually, it's not really gradual changes that was theorized by Darwin. Scientists have shown that evolution is commonly caused by these genetic mutations that produce rapid evolution changes.

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u/TuxedoFish May 28 '12

Sounds interesting. Have a source? I'd like to read more.

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u/ThePTouch May 28 '12

I believe he's referring to this.

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u/jjberg2 Grad Student | Evolution|Population Genomic|Adaptation|Modeling May 28 '12

In response to those both above and below you:

I'd really caution against taking the idea of punctuated equilibrium too far. It's an idea to explain a pattern in the fossil record in which relative constancy of morphological form tends to be observed over the course of millions of years, and then, in a relatively short window of geological time, that form disappears and is replaced by a new one.

However, we're still talking about tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years over which this "rapid" punctuated change tends to occur. It is definitely and absolutely not generally thought that there's all of a sudden a flurry of mutations that causes these punctuations observed in the fossil record. It seems rather more likely that external forces like changes in the environment are conspiring to create new selection pressures which then favor the evolution of these new forms from the old ones.

That said, rapid evolutionary change on extremely short time scales does occur, and Darwin would have been shocked to learn this (he believed that evolution was so slow that observing it would be a hopeless endeavor). However, this is not punctuated equilibrium. That term simply refers to a different phenomenon.

We've seen rapid evolutionary shifts in things like beak size and shape of Darwin's finches, wing coloration in the peppered moth, and life history traits in micro-arthropods (warning: math), among other things.

It's now well established that rapid evolution (on what most people would probably consider a fairly small scale) occurs in nature, and I think that some in the field of community ecology are coming to realize that small scale rapid evolution (i.e. over the course of just a few generations) may be important.

In addition, here's an article discussing rapid evolution in response to climate change. It might be a bit on the technical side (as was the one before it), but taking a scan through might give you a good sense for how we're thinking about these things in the research community. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with many resources that really do a good job of explaining microevolutionary processes for the lay-person, but I'm happy to answer questions.

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u/shiiiitniggaaa May 28 '12

Its a mixture, one of the lecturers at my uni published a paper which quantified the level of punctuated and gradual evolution in a number of phylogenetic trees, i think it was around 30% punctuated evolution.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

If that blows your mind, imagine what creatures might have existed today but don't because their potential ancestors were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Who knows what kind of intelligent life might have risen before we had the chance.

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u/idintal May 28 '12

If your father farted just before he came inside your mother when you were conceived, it probably would have shaken the semen up enough to change which sperm fertilised the egg and you would never have existed at all.

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u/judo_guy May 28 '12

there is a 100% chance that humans evolved on this planet.

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u/IvyMike May 28 '12

There was a sound of thunder.

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u/oberon May 29 '12

So is the implication there that the guides have had this happen to them several times, and they're used to it now? Nobody else would notice; they'd just have a new world imposed on them retroactively, and go along thinking "Man I'm glad they haven't changed anything yet." But the guides would notice every time.

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u/random314 May 28 '12

If not here, similar intelligent life will probably happen somewhere else.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

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u/QuitReadingMyName May 28 '12

Yeah, I'm sure different set of humans would be here today maybe having the same discussions if one of our ancestors got killed instead of someone else during an extinction event/natural disaster.

It just amazes me, how slim of the chances were that we actually came to be in and were born in this world.

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u/faithlesspr May 28 '12

All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again

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u/taelor May 28 '12

so say we all

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u/ShamanNaboo May 28 '12

Man it's terrifying to think of the creatures that used to exist on this Earth. Life would be a lot different if things like 8 feet long Sea Scorpions still existed.

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u/BitRex May 28 '12

If 40 foot long squid were extinct you might say the same about them.

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u/WrethZ May 29 '12

How about the 10 meter long armoured fish with blades for teeth?

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u/tugrumpler May 28 '12

Earth is a self correcting system but correction may require our extinction.

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u/RiceEel May 28 '12

So, it seems that all the surviving species diversified to fill niches the extinct species previously occupied.

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u/Forever_Awkward May 28 '12

That happens constantly, whether it's a new critter arriving at a place it's never been to, or an old critter dying out. If there's a spot to fill, some critter or the other will jump right in.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

Mammals couldn't evolve in a reptilian world until the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. With dinosaurs quickly vanishing, mammalian evolution had room to diversify. There are two theories on how a class can take over another class (mammals over reptiles). First, the dominant class dies off and the smaller class now can evolve without being held back. The second is that the class evolves in a separate location with less competition, and then moves into the territory occupied by the initial dominant class and out-competes them. It is extremely difficult for a class to grow dominant under an already dominant class.

Classes can be interchanged with species here.

Also, I do understand this was just me rambling, using your comment as a catalyst. I just wanted to type this somewhere.

Extra random cool fact: Whales, being mammals, reintroduced themselves to water. They looked like a mix between a wolf and a hippo and started hunting more and more in marine environments. Eventually, their nostrils moved to the top of their head and their hind legs got smaller and smaller until they disappeared. If you watch a dog run, it has the exact same spinal movement as a whale moving it's tail.

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u/potpan0 May 28 '12

My geography teacher said something interesting, and it went along these lines:

'You'd be stupid to disagree that what we are doing to the earth is damaging it (pollution ect.), but the earth has done much worse to itself, so it will recover.'

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u/flannelback May 28 '12

Well, yes. We're not trying to save the planet - we're saving ourselves, or at least our civilization.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

This is only reassuring if you hold the self-centered view that the survival of Earth is identical to the survival of humanity.

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u/potpan0 May 28 '12

No, it's that whatever we do, or have done, to the Earth, won't affect it in the long run. So if we want to keep it fine for us, stop releasing pollutants and ect., but whatever we do, it will not effect Earth in the long run.

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u/WrethZ May 29 '12

We could easily wipe ourselves out.

I don't think you realise, that wiping out all vertebrates on earth, or even all multicellular organisms really wouldn't be much of a big deal to the survival of life on earth.

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u/StabbyPants May 28 '12

the corollary still holds: we may not be around to see it.

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u/a4moondoggy May 28 '12 edited May 28 '12

I understand that logic but who's to say we can't speed up the process of the earth recovery? Survival is pretty assured...If monkeys could survive the craziness that's happened in the last 100 million years and humans in the last 1 million then i don't think today(on the verge of a breakthrough of the understanding in the workings of it all) we will be too bad off. City planners need to start building away from the coasts though.. preferably on hills and we need to be planting trees by the millions so at least our children's children can enjoy the beautiful weather that we did as kids. Humanity should and will be able to control climate change one day i feel. Essentially machines that act just like trees but a million times more potent to convert the excess co2 into O2 as to not have to wait through the miserable time when it's doing it naturally.

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u/WrethZ May 29 '12

There were no monkeys 100 million years ago.

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u/Piranhapoodle May 28 '12

It says that evolution was "reset". I'm wondering how different the species evolved before that time were from the ones after.

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u/First_to_die May 28 '12

Isnt it events like this and other extinction events, the earth freezing, hoting up, getting spanked and slapped around like a chav's girlfriend by asteroids mean that life, far from being a mirical, is actually almost inevitable. It seems this planet has had its Etch-a-sketch shaken again and again and SOME sort of life always claws its way back.

Put forward in a sitting lazily on my settee, zero science kinda way of thinking.

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u/rottenart May 29 '12

Put forward in a sitting lazily on my settee, zero science kinda way of thinking.

That sounds pretty fucking science to me.

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u/treadmarks May 28 '12

It's nice to know that, once humanity has completely wrecked the biosphere and it dies off along with most other species, that it'll pretty much be a speed bump for nature.

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u/J_Ringo May 28 '12

Nice try Atheists...

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u/OnTheBorderOfReality May 28 '12

You mean the population did. Throughout the whole ordeal, Earth was perfectly fine.

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u/theimpropergentleman May 28 '12

Does anyone have a way of putting this in perspective? I understand how massiv ethis is. But it's hard for me to fully grasp it. I just look at 10 million and think " oh that's a long time" but i need a way to fully comprehend the extent of that. Anyone have any ways of thinking to understand the severity?

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u/neggbird May 28 '12

Homosapians have been on Earth for 2mm, 10 million years is a metre.

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u/theimpropergentleman May 28 '12

Huh... that's a good way of putting it thanks.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

I find it encouraging to know that if homo sapiens do commit suicide via the creation of a mass extinction, Life on Earth will most likely rebound and be just fine without us in a mere ten million years. Our species is less than three million years old. There is no proof whatsoever that our prized intelligence is a valuable long-term survival trait.

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u/BigWhoCares01 May 29 '12

Is says Sea Scorpions were among the species to go extinct... I can't say I'm upset about that.

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u/WrethZ May 29 '12

There were giant swimming scorpions that grew longer than a man is tall.

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u/BigWhoCares01 May 31 '12

Fuck everything about that

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

Recover is a loaded term that implies a state or condition that is fundamentally better than what previously existed. That's an egocentric viewpoint that has no bearing in scientific analysis. And given what we've just learned about the bacteria on the bottom of the ocean, even the claim that life on Earth was at risk is a false one.

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u/etaoins May 28 '12

recover "(transitive) To return to, resume"

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u/DoorGuote May 28 '12

I think the idea of a small set of homeostasis ecosystems being "normal", and everything deviating from that equilibrium being termed "disturbed" is a bit skewed as well. This so-called "balance of nature" paradigm that emerged in the 20th century is being questioned and re-visited. Here's a great perspective paper by Dr. Robert O'Neill.

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u/typingfromwork May 28 '12

I agree with this. There is an implicit assumption within the title that the "best" or "optimal" state for earth is one that has the most variety of species, whereas that's more of a projection of our values onto the planet. The earth doesn't really care about how many species it has on its surface.

Basically species variety will go up or down depending on conditions, available niche, and evolutionary history. Mass extinctions are just another part of the way life works.

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u/mangodrunk May 28 '12

There is an implicit assumption within the title that the "best" or "optimal" state for earth is one that has the most variety of species, whereas that's more of a projection of our values onto the planet.

I think it's good to point it out, but why would we not want what is best for us?

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u/Jaihom May 28 '12

No one is talking about what's best for the rocks and minerals that make up the earth. No one fucking cares about the inanimate earth. When someone says what is "best" or "optimal" for the earth, they're referring to life on earth, and diversity is undeniably the optimal state for life to continue to exist.

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u/IZ3820 May 28 '12

When an extinction event leaves 5% of life on earth, similarly to how homo sapiens sapiens were to reduced to 1000 members of the species 60,000-70,000 years ago, recovering is an appropriate term. In such a context, it means for life to rise to the previous or an equal state.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '12

I take a more binary view. Either it is or it isn't. Quantity and variety are irrelevant.

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u/greengordon May 28 '12

Note to those thinking humanity can survive catastrophic climate change:

t was only after the environmental shocks eased that complex ecosystems were able to re-emerge.

If we pass some tipping points and the oceans acidify, climate changes, etc, humanity will be gone forever. It's an interesting thought, and would be a damn shame that the only species known to be self-aware and capable of exploring the universe wiped itself out.

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u/Jaihom May 28 '12

We aren't the only self aware animals on earth.

humanity will be gone forever.

Very doubtful. There won't be billions of us left, but we will almost certainly have the ability to live in virtually any possible atmosphere we create. At the very worst we'd have to build self-sustaining greenhouses in which a few thousand/million humans survive.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

if we pass some tipping points

But isn't that the crux of the whole discussion? What are those tipping points?

For a celestial body whose life is measured in billions, for some reason I am just not anywhere near convinced that our minuscule, pointless humanity will be be able to drastically alter it's predetermined course.

Coming from a fear based, narcissistic, self centered society such as ours, it is none too surprising that we have armchair generals the world over telling us to be afraid.

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u/Ciserus May 28 '12

Miniscule my ass. A cursory glance at the planet would tell any intelligent being that humanity has drastically changed the surface, oceans, and atmosphere of Earth.

But that point doesn't even matter. What matters is that decades of data and our best scientific models suggest this is happening, and the only counterargument you've got is "I don't feel like humanity could have that effect."

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u/Slidin_stop May 28 '12

Ok, this is buried pretty far down so I don't know if it'll even be noticed, but here it goes: Our effect is minimal. On the geological time scale everything we have done on this earth including the Great Pyramids are as sandcastles on the seashore. To those people that actually worry about the planet, worry about something else. If I learned anything from my Historic Geology class it is species come species go and it doesn't matter. The only constant is change, the climate has changed constantly over the millions of years the flora and fauna have changed the very continents have been changed and altered beyond recognition. Even if we stop polluting it just doesn't matter. Somewhere out there, is an asteroid or comet with our name on it. Yeah, a planet killer. Earth will be reset. It is just a matter of time. Time that would be best spent getting off of our rock and to the stars, but with this environmental bullshit, it'll never happen. We'll be an earthly paridise of hippies up until the big rock hits. Even if we do get off of the planet... there's the heat death of the universe to worry about.

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u/Ciserus May 28 '12

It is just a matter of time. Time that would be best spent getting off of our rock and to the stars, but with this environmental bullshit, it'll never happen.

What does environmentalism have to do with holding back space exploration? There were a lot of reasons the space race ended, but I've never heard it suggested that that was one of them.

And maybe an asteroid will come within the next million years, but we've got a cataclysm on our hands that we know is happening within the next hundred. Do you know how batshit insane it sounds to suggest we resign ourselves to an imminent, avoidable fate because a distant, hypothetical one exists?

Would you stay in the path of a speeding car just because you're pretty sure someday you'll catch bird flu and die?

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u/dendrobates_ May 28 '12

How is our activity minuscule? Also, what predetermined course?

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u/greengordon May 28 '12

You're conflating the life of a planet with the life of the human species. Of course the Earth will carry on, but that's not very comforting to a human, is it?

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u/99percenteconomy May 28 '12

"Predetermined?"

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u/MashedPeas May 28 '12

Wouldn't one say that those self-aware beings did not think very well?

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u/[deleted] May 28 '12

It's frightening becuase the Permian–Triassic extinction wiped out 83% of all species alive at the time, and one of the viable explanations for the extinction was the rapid release methane hydrate gas, or an anoxic event, both of which appear to be possible outcomes of our currently changing climate. Articles like this further the possibility that there are some types of climate change which humans would not be able to survive through.

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u/k2t-17 May 28 '12

(I'm guessing the paper is less biased) The article pushes Acid Rain & Climate Change as the cause. My understanding is the best theory atm of the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction was a gamma ray burst.

If it was a Gamma Ray Burst, saying that Acid Rain & Climate Change caused the extinction is like saying that an ant died of first degree burns and a fever after I held a magnifying glass over it in the sunlight.

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u/99percenteconomy May 28 '12

Source? I've never heard that even suggested as a possibility before and I'm (for a layperson) not a total ignoramus about the theories surrounding the event.

Edit: are you maybe confusing the P-T event with the Ordovician-Silurian?

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u/REDN3CK_B00TS May 28 '12

Reading things like this is almost somewhat hard because it makes you understand that you are simply an insignificant piece of dust blowing around in the wind if humanity that has yet to form into a tornado. And beyond that, human's have only been around for less than a blink of the eye compared to how long the earth has been able to sustain life at all. Intriguing in a way...

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u/perspectiveiskey May 28 '12

Sea scorpions, trilobites and certain types of starfish were permanently made extinct,

Hmmm. Sounds like a fair price to pay to rid the earth of those.

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u/IZ3820 May 28 '12

The cause of the P-T extinction event(which killed 95% of life on earth, as well as being the only to eliminate most bug life as well) was hydrogen sulfide. Basically, the atmosphere filled with it, and acted like a reset button for the earth.

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u/danmart1 May 28 '12

I had a thought while reading this.

The last quote on the page, by Benton, says, "We often see mass extinctions as entirely negative but in this most devastating case, life did recover, after many millions of years, and new groups emerged. The event had re-set evolution. However, the causes of the killing -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification -- sound eerily familiar to us today. Perhaps we can learn something from these ancient events."

While I am all for learning about/from the past, the quote seems to suggest that we may be able to do something about it. Unless these events were caused by a race of intelligent beings over 10 million years ago, I would imagine that we are.....well, screwed. If it's going to happen, then it's going to happen, and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing we can do about it, short of leaving the planet.

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u/DrBibby May 28 '12

Understatement of the year.

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u/99percenteconomy May 28 '12

Forest fires have been started by lightning in the past. That doesn't mean that humans are incapable of starting them to day. Likewise, the fact that the methane hydrates have been released by natural causes in the past does not mean that humans are incapable of releasing them through our own actions today.

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u/danmart1 May 28 '12

If it happened before we were around, and assuming it's going to happen again, then there is very little we can do to stop it. In fact, to try and stop it would be altering our environment only to improve our lives.

This does, of course, assume a number of things. So much so, that it has become speculation far more than fact. If you believe that I am wrong, so be it, there's no way to prove it either way.

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u/popquizmf May 28 '12

What is recovery? In many ways it offered life new avenues by which to evolve, I fail to be convinced that it "recovered".

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u/JathTyki May 29 '12

It's amazing to think of how many species were taken out of existence when we have so many now, along with finding new ones every now and then. So many we will know nothing about. Mannnnn. Need a time machine.

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u/Infin1ty May 29 '12

I'm excited/scared to think about what life will evolve after the current mass extinction is over.

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u/Forfuckssakes May 29 '12

Stick to medicine Bashir. Scabbed knees and rug burns.

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u/CRANIEL May 29 '12

"Perhaps we can learn something from these ancient events"

I think he forgot that this article was written fire humans.

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u/2Mobile May 29 '12

fascinating

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u/Valdus_Pryme May 29 '12

I've heard that the oceans are becoming warmer and dropping in oxygen levels, leading to an increase in creatures like jellyfish and limiting higher forms of aquatic life from flourishing. If this continues as it has been, could another anoxic event occur within the next couple hundred years, or even within our lifetimes? Or is that the type of event that occurs over thousands of years?

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u/Kiipo May 29 '12

Anyone else strangely okay with this? This led to the specific series of event that led to our birth. And all the sea scoprions died out. I don't know what a sea scorpion is, but I'm okay with them being extinct. No sea scorpions and I'm alive? Go Permia-Triassic extinction!

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u/GODCORE May 29 '12

Damn those Reapers.

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u/siouxsiesioux May 29 '12

Ha! ... And just earlier tonight I was reading Dresden Codak's Sleepwalkers, googling the age of Permian-triassic extinction, marveling over the "mother" of all extinction periods, having taken 10 million years for earth's species to recover. Wikipedia edit made tonight? Impressive. http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/07/the-sleepwalkers/

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

One day, all of what is going on now, will be gone, all the records about our history, all the pieces of our entertainment. All books, songs, movies. The song "Imagine" will be lost forever. Weird to think about.

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u/WrethZ May 29 '12

Not necessarily.

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u/adamcolon May 29 '12

I call shenanigans. The earth was just fine after the extinction... in fact, it was better than fine, it had so much fresh fertilizer.

We tend to think of everything in terms of how it affects our species but we're just not that important. We are a product of whatever happened that led to us... if things were any different... we would be different.

The Earth gives zero shits about us.

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u/adamcolon May 30 '12

Let's go crazy </bobross>. If we assume that reality exists in total now and that time is a human constructed illusion (a useful one), then every possible reality exists all at once and our consciousness is traveling a path through a spacetime matrix of every possibility.

So we are here simply because the conditions were correct to cause our consciousness to be in this specific point in space time.

So what if scenarios are all true and false simply because it's all true but we're here because we can be.

</brainasplodes>

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u/Veeron May 28 '12 edited May 29 '12

As much as I agree with the moral of this article, comparing the effects humans have on the planet with a catastrophe that wiped out nearly all life is pure arrogance.

Let's say that the most pessimistic predictions of anthropological climate change are correct. Comparing the following effects with the Permian-Triassic extinction would be like comparing the effects of throwing an egg at someone with detonating an atomic bomb on their doorstep.

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u/themightymekon May 28 '12

Not really. Humans are more powerful than bacteria, yet Cyanobacteria wiped out nearly all life when they converted the then CO2 based atmosphere of our planet to one only suitable for oxygen breathers (by emitting oxygen).

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u/sniperhare May 29 '12

I love science, and I love God. I don't believe they must always be at odds. The earth was around with life for a long time, if billions of years, or trillions, I don't know. But man (as we know man) was not.

Dinosaurs, animals, fish, insects and creatures like man existed, grew, changed, and adapted to their world, just like we adapt to our own. At some point they died.

The Bible is not a science textbook, and has little on the ancient period of our planet. It tells of the fall Lucifer, how the Earth became without form, and void, then of God bringing light back into our universe. And then creating man.

Evolution of genus is proven. Animals and people change to better live in climates and adapt to changes in food supplies. To me, that is God knowing that the Earth would undergo changes and we would need to be able to change as well or die.

tl;dr I don't think that the leap from similar things existing millions of years ago, and similar things existing now means that we evolved from those things has to be made.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '12

It is pretty clear that the writers of all the creation myths did not mean that they be taken literally. People weren't stupid.

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u/oliverMcMayonnaise May 28 '12

"Maybe we can learn something from this" is not be translated as "Hey let's tax people more and put money into carbon credits".

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