Could Dinosaurs and Humans have lived together?

[Mark T]

I was with a friend the other night having a few glasses of brandy when we suddenly started talking about what it would be like to have dinosaurs living with humans.

Would humans have found some way to tame them as pets? Would we use them in battle (I would be riding a T-Rex with a cannon strapped to its head).

Would the dinosaurs have eaten us before we had a chance to start populating the earth?

Would the carnivores have become extinct because of us hunting them?


Post your random thoughts and any ideas you may have.

 

[TheCracker]

I think if you watch the Flintstones you'll see that Humans and Dinosaurs can and do live perfectly well together. They also provide an enviromently friendly form of power for the average home 👍

 

[turboash78]

We would surely have to re-think our building practices... we'd either have to live underground, or put up some damn big fences around our cities... I sure wouldn't want a Brontosaurus leaning on my house!

 

[OZZYGT]

I sure wouldn't want a Brontosaurus leaning on my house!

Or doing something else!

I think If humanity would have developed the way we did without them, we probably would have killed them by now. With all the high-tech weapons that we are now able to create, Dinosaurs would have been an easy target for us. Why? Because besides the fact that they are wild and humongous, they are carnivores, Humans = Chips for dinosaurs.

I say it would be way too dangerous to co-exist with them. And there is absolutely no way we would have had them as pets , except for the little ones....MAYBE.

 

[Touring Mars]

Interesting question 👍 Here's what I think...

Although it is a proven fact that humans did not co-exist with dinosaurs, it is interesting nevertheless to speculate about what would have happened if they had.... it is a slightly difficult question to answer, however, because the very fact that the two taxa never co-existed probably played atleast some role in each taxon becoming the dominant one of it's own era... in other words, if dinosaurs and humans did live together, they couldn't both have ruled the world...

To begin, you would have to define what sort of 'humans' you're talking about. I don't mean species-wise, here... more 'time-wise'... would dinosaurs be any match for 21st Century Man and his technologies? Maybe in the wild (just as an unarmed man would struggle out on the Serengeti against a pack of lions), but I guess we'd easily have the upper hand in the main. But would Stone Age Man survive in a world otherwise dominated by the dinosaurs? This is a tougher question... and I'd say that Stone Age man would have a very precarious existence indeed. Armed only with a spear and a sabre-tooth tigerskin, even the most proficient of human hunters would be powerless (even in a large group) against a pack of T-Rex. Of course, the world is a very big place, and it is highly likely that humans would use their superior brain power to avoid dinosaurs, and slowly work out ways in which to avoid them or even get rid of them altogether - but again, we come up against an assumption that we are dealing with humans at a very advanced stage of evolution - i.e. a highly developed brain and an intellect powerful enough to 'outwit' everything else. You also would have to define not only what sort of humans you have, but when (in relation to the advent of dinosaurs) they emerged. If Modern Man existed prior to dinosaurs emerging, dinosaurs would never stand a chance of getting any sort of foothold like they actually had... the point, once again, is that the evolutionary development of one would have a direct bearing on the evolutionary development of the other - possibly (likely, even) that if we had co-existed, neither taxon would have turned out the same as they actually did...

The precursor to modern man did exist at the same time as dinosaurs, and survived the mass-extinction event that wiped most of them out, so our ancestors must have had something on them... however, 65 million years ago, our direct evolutionary ancestors would have looked very different to what we currently call 'human'. (The earliest hominids only appear around 6 million years ago...) Conversely, however, and contrary to what you are told in primary school, the dinosaurs were not completely wiped out either, and they too still exist, in the form of birds....

 

[Bram Turismo]

Would be weird though:

Here Rex...ROAR!

 

[OZZYGT]

the dinosaurs were not completely wiped out either, and they too still exist, in the form of birds....

I thought Crocodiles and Galapagos turtles were the animals that haven't really evolved since the Dinosaur era.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Because besides the fact that they are wild and humongous, they are carnivores, Humans = Chips for dinosaurs.

I say it would be way too dangerous to co-exist with them. And there is absolutely no way we would have had them as pets , except for the little ones....MAYBE.

If I recall correctly, not all dinosaurs were carnivores, but those that weren't probably would have stepped on us anyway.

 

[OZZYGT]

You recalled correctly sir! I should have made clear I was referring to the carnivore ones.

 

[daan]

Could Dinosaurs and Humans have lived together?

Do you mean as flatmates? Or as live-in-lovers, or as a married couple?

 

[Bram Turismo]

 

[Mark T]

Do you mean as flatmates? Or as live-in-lovers, or as a married couple?

Maybe 'co-existed' would have been a better word to use.

 

[Omnis]

The real question is this: Much like how humans have evolved, would dinosaurs have done the same?

My P.E. coach could've been a Velociraptor!

 

[Keichi Tsuchiya]

I was with a friend the other night having a few glasses of brandy when we suddenly started talking about what it would be like to have dinosaurs living with humans.

Would humans have found some way to tame them as pets? Would we use them in battle (I would be riding a T-Rex with a cannon strapped to its head).

Would the dinosaurs have eaten us before we had a chance to start populating the earth?

Would the carnivores have become extinct because of us hunting them?


Post your random thoughts and any ideas you may have.

I think somebody spiked your drinks with something nasty...

 

[niky]

With modern weapons, animals become nearly useless on the battlefield.

----

Regarding intelligences... it might not be possible for two mutually exclusive intelligent species to live on the same planet (or, at least, the same continent). Human prehistory could be littered with genocides, for all we know (Cro-Mags versus Neanderthals, anyone?)... what more with another intelligence that looks absolutely nothing like us?

It would be interesting though, to speculate on a world where dino-men lived to the age of humanity (maybe in the Americas?) and the two met during an Ice Age (the time when Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait to the Americas)... The result would have probably been something out of "The Lost World".

But then, if dinosaurs had evolved to intelligence with their physiology at the time of the great extinction, we'd have scaly, warm blooded (there's some evidence to suggest this), egg-laying sapients with brains one-step of complexity below the mammalian brain (possibly).

The development of civilization has a freezing effect on evolution... thus, they wouldn't get any smarter, or start giving live-birth. For them to reach the age of humans, we'd have to posit the theory that they evolved some twenty million or so years after the Cretaceous extinction (and that it never happened) and then steadily develop to some stone-age or bronze-age civilization level and stay there for another forty million years (which would be kind of far-fetched).

If they lived up to the time of Homo Sapiens, H.S. would probably be superior to Dino Sapiens (D.S.), and, given a free area to develop to sapience, could eventually supersede and replace D.S.. That's if DinoSaps don't mess up the ecology enough to completely forestall our development.

Of course, they'd have to worry about Avia Sapiens, too...

 

[Touring Mars]

Interesting article about how dinosaur and mammal evolution is (or isn't as the case may be) dependent upon each other... (you'll need Acrobat reader to see the evolutionary 'supertree' diagram)...

 

[EXelero]

wonder how their meat would taste in comparison to cows, pigs etc? walking dogs through fields of brontosurus etc could be hazardous. their poo would also leave horses looking like a god send! championship roses!

we may survive cos they could feed on all the animals that now walk the earth such as goats, horses, rabbits etc.
probably wouldnt need lawn mowers either!

 

[Danoff]

I think the proper answer to this question is that it couldn't happen because humans could not properly evolve while dinos were on the scene (otherwise perhaps they would have). But supposing that humans and dinos evolved side-by-side we could come to a few conclusions.

There are much better animals for eating than humans. I doubt that very many of the larger dino species would be interested in humans as food. As humans go, we're like buffalo wings without the sauce. All bone, little meat. So I'd imagine a world where humans struggled more with the smaller dinos more than anything else. I think jurrasic park got that one right. T-Rex was a problem for smaller dinos like the raptor. Raptors would be more of a problem for us.

Dinos were pretty smart, so I imagine humans could tame them (if we raised them from young) and teach them to hunt/defend etc kinda like we tame lions and tigers. But we'd be riding dinos like raptors probably more than T-Rex. The pay-off for riding a T-Rex would be minimal compared to the downside. Lose control once and you fall all the way to the ground and die - or it eats you.

Raptors and similar sized dinos would still be difficult because if they turned on you they'd do a lot of damage - kinda like a lion or tiger. But they'd have been strong enough to ride. With a muzzle I think that would work out well... but making a good muzzle would require metalworking - and that's something we didn't develop for a while.

 

[UnoMOTO]

Maybe you all have forgotten this documentary. Case closed.

 

[niky]

Given 65 million years, I think the Dinos would have evolved into something else entirely. We could be living in a world of bird-men, with the crumbling remains of dinotopian cities rotting underground? Who are we to know? Maybe there were intelligent dinos... and they were too smart to get fossilized... or even if they were, their tools and such were easily destroyed by the ravages of time. The fossil with imprints of feather or scale are the exception, not the rule. Maybe they lived in a dense jungle, where scavengers and bacteria completely ruined the fossilization process. For all we know, there's an entire dinosaurian Angkor Watt sitting under a mile of sediment on the ocean floor.

One of my favorite "short short" sci-fi stories has an intelligent group of dinosaurs land a time-machine back in the Cretaceous period. One of them turns out to be a psychotic idealist, who believes that dinosaur society, with rampant racism (between carnivores and herbivores), war, poverty, etcetera, is an abomination, and by killing off the dinosaurs, he could pave the way for the development of a kinder, gentler, more perfect species.

So he sets off a big bomb. Kaboom. No more dinosaurs.

After a few years, another time-machine lands, out steps a group of intelligent cockroaches...

 

[Touring Mars]

Given 65 million years, I think the Dinos would have evolved into something else entirely. We could be living in a world of bird-men, with the crumbling remains of dinotopian cities rotting underground? Who are we to know? Maybe there were intelligent dinos... and they were too smart to get fossilized... or even if they were, their tools and such were easily destroyed by the ravages of time. The fossil with imprints of feather or scale are the exception, not the rule. Maybe they lived in a dense jungle, where scavengers and bacteria completely ruined the fossilization process. For all we know, there's an entire dinosaurian Angkor Watt sitting under a mile of sediment on the ocean floor.

He he, I always like these 'for all we know' type scenarios. For all we do know, none of that is ever likely to be found or shown to be true. Although it's interesting to note that there are indeed things which existed/happened for which there are no physical clues left for us to find - but we have to be careful in speculating about this sort of thing... I'd like to call it the Donald Rumsfeld approach to paleontology... (i.e. just because it can't be found, doesn't mean it's not or was never there...!) Luckily for us, there is a mountain of physical evidence from the era of the dinosaurs, but not one piece of it points towards dinosaurs having used any form of technology - tools, clothes, primitive dwellings etc. Not only that but there is no evidence that suggests that anything had that sort of technology at that time. It's fun to speculate, but it's also dangerous in the wrong hands. The next thing you know, you have a 'museum' with a model of a Triceratops wearing a leather saddle on it's back (and that, sadly, is true...)

 

[GT Pro]

From what I know, yes - we *could* have lived with dinosaurs. However, the constant threat from the latter of the Cretaceous period (e.g. Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor) would have proved a constant and undefined problem for early 'humans'. It would basically come down to how quickly the human brain could adapt to such a situation and take advantage of it - It would be decided by human ingenuity against the dinosaur's sheer power.

To be honest, I really don't believe that the earliest of humans could have upheld themselves sufficiently enough against the sheer power of these beasts but I could be wrong. Afterall, we have lived on this Earth for around 2-10 million years (Assuming all previous estimates are taken into account - http://www.livescience.com/humanbiol...imp_split.html)...

*against the dinosaurs rather remarkable 165*