Would Dinosaurs be able to live in todays environments

Hi All,
Heres one for you?
If in some way man could bring back the Dinosaurs( Jurassic Park) ,would the dinosaurs be able to survive our current environment?
Its been proven that oxygen levels during the Mesozoic era were considerably greater than what they are today.
The plants that the Herbiverous dinosaurs fed on would be different.
The average global temperature during the Mesozoic was considerably higher than what it is today.

Yes, I definitely think they could not survive in our present climate. Perhaps if they would have had the chance to adapt (like crocodiles and other animals did during thousands of centuries - slowly, slowly) but not in a sudden 'return appearance'.

Copper's right. The chance for the Dinosaurs to adapt would be VERY slowly, as in millions of years. In that time our environment would be different as well an there would be occurences of variation and speciation. That is how Charles Darwin viewed Evolution.

In that time, we wouldn't even have the same species of dinosaur as when they were reborn or cloned.


The reason evolution (Mainly macro-evolution) occurs is that organisms "race" to catch up with a perpetually changing environment. The Biosphere is CONSTANTLY changing. The environment today is different than it was when we evolved. Yet, we adapted.

If we remember Natural Selection, we will remember that it means that if an organism has a very beneficial gene, in a specific environment, then it can reproduce and successfully exist and live (The environment is ever-changing and random, so that organism with that random gene will be fortunate to survive).

There's also other factors that determine an organism's evolutionary path and success in an environment, but I won't get into that. Here was my $0.02 (more like $0.10) of my opinion if dinosaurs could survive in the Quaternary period with us. And, if what I said doesn't happen, there isn't a good chance they'll survive...at least not very well.

thank dude

lamperious wrote:

thank dude

Um, What? I don't understand, lamparious. Can you repeat yourself.

No. too much pollutants in the air.

People seem to have missed the fact that one group of theropod dinosaurs HAVE adapted slowly and are doing quite well in today's environment. Birds

Excelent question Kenobi.
If we could bring back mesozoic dinosaurs, the lower oxygen content of the atmosphere would mostly be a problem for the huge dinosaurs. (bigger than rhinos/elephants). I wouldn't expect medium-small dinos to have any problems on that account.
Animals usually adapt physically to the environment they're born into. As they grow up perhaps they'll breathe deeper and grow deeper lungs/larger lung musculature, than what was normal back in their time.
(Note that this is not evolution, as it's just single individuals adapting in a non-hereditary way. For our hypothetical Jurassic Park dinosaurs to adapt in an evolutionary sense we would need large populations of each species (thousands of individuals) and we would have to create them with individual mutations, so that natural selection has variants to choose between! And as copper and Raptor Lewis says, it would take a very long time)

As for plants, you hit the spot again. Grass for instance is everywhere today, but it seems to have evolved in the Cretaceous, so only the last species of herbivorous dinosaurs should have adaptations for digesting it. Jurassic herbivours 'll probably munch down on it annyhow and get sick.
They'll also need the right stomach bacteria to help them ferment the plants they eat. Perhaps we could help them by transferring bacteria from bowels of cattle or rhinos or such. Or perhaps from ostriches? They are closely related, herbivorous, and have reasonably large guts (in bird standards).
Birds meat is often quite lean. I wonder if carnivorous dinosaurs can handle the large ammounts of fat in, say, a domesticated cow?

Temperatures shouldn't be a problem, as long as the dino-sanctuaries are properly located. Most species would probably prefer a tropical climate.
Dinosaurs living near the poles experienced winter and probably snowfall. They should do well in a temperate climate zone.

Animals adapt slowly to small changes. if they were in todays environment it would be a too big of a change, and not enough time for them to adapt.

D!NO wrote:

Animals adapt slowly to small changes. if they were in todays environment it would be a too big of a change, and not enough time for them to adapt.

Well, that completely depends on what you mean by "too big of a change" and "enough time".

There is of course no chance of adaption if the stress from the new environment kills the animals while they are young.

If the animals are only sickened but survive, they may adapt physically while growing up.

And if they survive until reproductive age (5-14 years of age depending on what dinosaur species) and if the stress is not too damaging for them to have viable offspring, then they can adapt as a species in an evolutionary sence as well.

When the planet the Earth has casually got in Solar system the gravity changes and giants of fauna of a planet have been doomed;
In more details on a site " Space Odyssey planet the Earth "