Cloning prehistoric animals

[CompanyMan]

A handgun?

No handguns mentioned above by me. Yes the .700 NE round has been adjusted to fit into a cartoonie looking pistol, but that is not something one person could readyly carry and hunt with without a stable platform on which to shoot it.

There is a rifled double barrel weapon that shoots that round. It was popularized in Tremors and one of the Jurrasic Parks ( But I have'nt seen all of them all the way through ).

Are you crazy?

Probably.

A handgun?

I would carry a large bore side arm though. Anything that starts with .4 and has another couple numbers following it. .454, .500, or in all likelyhood a Smith & Wesson M629 modified ' Mountian Magnum ' in .44 magnum. Likely would'nt kill one or any of them but once they get ahold of me, I could go for it and get a few contact shots off, two for it, one for me!

I'd go for a stock standard double barreled Shotgun (from The Lost World: Jurassic Park) for hunting T-rex's.

That is what the .700 Nitro is for. And if it don't drop it with two well placed rounds to the chest ( heart or lungs ), it will ruin ones day, I'd bet.

You need at least a a RPG (have any of you seen Dino Crisis 2? Even with an RPG to the eye the Rex is still alive)


That or a M1 Abrams.

What a waste of the meat.

[Neltharion]

Go for the Head.

[CompanyMan]

Go for the Head.

Everything I always knew, they had small brians, thicker skulls. And little eyes. Not that I am far from against head shots on two legged critters. But, on large, bit toothed one, I'll stick with the soft underbelly.

[Neltharion]

Do you know "exactly" where to aim for the heart?

Safer bet going for the head.

[CompanyMan]

With the size of the .700 round, any two to the chest reigon with surely clip the heart and or lungs.

I am not saying that a couple to the skull would crush it, or severly fracture it. All I am suggesting is that the likelyhood to miss the head is greater than center mass. Making it an unsafer bet to hit. It's a principle of shooting.

Besides, I could likely research through some childrens books and find out where the heart and lungs are laid out.

[the-yellow-alien]

Clone em. I want to see a dinosaur before I die.

What Malcolm preached in JP was exaggerated. Dinos don't have a chance against our weaponry.

[BishopIII]

 You could take down an adult male Velociraptor mongoliensis with a baseball bat to the head, easy! They're only the size of a medium dog!! The heart would be to the front of the chest, just behind the shoulders, and closer to the spine, the brain is fairly small by mammal standards, but adequate from an Avian perspective. Most of a dinosaur's skull is a lightweight network of hollow struts, even T. rex had hollow bones and a skull that one man could lift, when fresh. Aim for the heart, that's the easy target. JP tried to make them seem as tough as xenos, when they'd go down like any other animal. As for cloning Hypsilophodonts, I'd imagine that they could give a nasty forward kick, like an Ostrich or Cassowary, as well as a horrible bite, what with those leaf-shaped serrated teeth and deep beak. Could have your hand off! Stegosaurs are a definate no-no! They would have acted much like the one on Walking with Dinosaurs, being on autopilot all the time, and whipping it's tail about like a cat o' nine tails whenever any non-steg comes along. I'm sure that the other dinosaurs could be trained to the same degree, if not more, as the captive 'gators in Florida or Ostriches in Kenya. Likely in between the two. However, they'd always be a potential danger to their keepers, but then, so are dogs and cats, we just conveniently forget that we sleep with a potential predator of humans sleeping at our feet. Guess it's a typical human power trip thing, exercise dominion over all other life-forms, cause damn, it makes our balls feel big! 

 I'd say yes to cloning Mammoths, Sabre-Toothed Cats, Cave Bears, and Woolly Rhinos, but that is due to the nature of their extinction, generally caused by human interference (the predators exterminated from areas that humans wished to settle, and the herbivores eaten by those people). There we have no Ian Malcolm debates on Scientific Morality and Ethics.

 I would want to see Non-avian Dinosaurs roaming around, I don't think that they are any more dangerous than any modern animals. The three-foot scorpion couldn't survive in our relatively oxygen-depleted atmosphere, neither would the giant dragonflies of the Carboniferous-Permian Periods. Their respiratory systems wouldn't suffice to oxygenate their tissues quickly enough.

 Speaking of Nigel Marven, I loved that bit in Primeval season 3 where he gets eaten by that Giganotosaurus! Classic! 

[CompanyMan]

Aim for the heart, that's the easy target. 

...a nasty forward kick, like an Ostrich.

I'm sure that the other dinosaurs could be trained to the same degree, if not more, as the captive 'gators in Florida or Ostriches in Kenya.

 

One through the pump on any creature will assure a KILL... after a few moments.

Ostriches can kill humans with ease. But a load of 00 ( Double Ought ) Buck to thier necks and head will ruin them.

Them gator and crocs and birds can still kill.

[Dutch90]

I'd say yes to cloning Mammoths, Sabre-Toothed Cats, Cave Bears, and Woolly Rhinos, but that is due to the nature of their extinction, generally caused by human interference (the predators exterminated from areas that humans wished to settle, and the herbivores eaten by those people). There we have no Ian Malcolm debates on Scientific Morality and Ethics.

It depends

[BishopIII]

 I agree that things are never so cut and dry, especially in evolution. But Mammoths were present in the Arctic Circle, where the climate and environs are similar to to their Ice-Age habitats, why didn't those survive?
 Mammoths were generally Tundra animals rather than the traditional image of a huge endotherm walking about on permafrost where very little food is present. Tradition and Paleontology don't mix, just look at the poor Neanderthals. So-called anatomists used the bones of a toothless, arthritic old man as a model for reconstructing an entire species. I digress.
 What about the herds of Mammoth that were herded over cliffs by humans, so that they didn't have to battle them. Such a wasteful means of hunting, at least most of the bodies show evidence of butchering. I am aware of and open to the possibility that the herds may have simply blundered over a cliff fleeing some other predator, only to be discovered by humans and eaten as easy meat. But it does seem that, wherever humans colonised, these species disappeared from said areas. It appears that the last Mammoths outlasted the last Ice Age for a couple of thousand years before they finally snuffed it. If they had been truly as affected by the end of the Ice Ages, they'd have died in centuries or even decades. I'm surprised that they didn't all migrate with the receding ice sheets, we would see a greater concentration of more recent specimens the further north you go, however, many of the more recent ones had adapted to a life in a more temperate environment, theres no reason one couldn't survive in Siberian Tundra or even in the Scottish Highlands. Like Bears, Wolves, Lynx etc. were unquestionably wiped out by humans in Britain, all hunted to extinction by a Medieval society (Leaps beyond Paleolithic man, but not really that advanced technologically). I do realise that the population in Britain in the Middle Ages was far more dense than during the Stone Age, so the example may not be applicable to this. The Giant Elk of Ireland was definitely wiped out by humans, due to a small population of deer on what is a relatively small landmass (not sure if the Giant's Causeway still extended to Scotland by that time, I doubt it), coupled with an influx of hungry people.

 My conclusion is that it was a combination of factors that led to their demise, much as with the Dinosaurs (although I'm sure nothing hunted THEM to extinction! ). Buuut, we're starting to derail the thread, so I'll get back to cloned extinct animals. Non-lethal way to deal with any animal, blast some fucking Cradle of Filth at 'em and they'll run a mile! Or a couple of warning shots, or perhaps a handheld airhorn, every animal hates loud, sudden noises. Lethal way to drop a T. rex: Trip the fucker up. It's been determined that, were a Tyrannosaurus to trip in mid stride, the concussive force of it's head hitting the ground would cause fatal brain damage. Trouble is, all the new finds show that most Tyrannosaurs lived in family groups, rather than as solitary hunters or scavengers. So, you kill one, his bigger brothers would likely come along spoiling for a fight, and maybe to eat their fallen sibling (many other predators do it). Such an arrangement has it's advantages; smaller, younger, swifter individuals run down the prey, maybe slashing at it as it flees til it weakens, then the bigger, heavier, more stately adults come in to finish off the prey. 

[Dutch90]

I always thought of Tyrannosaurus as being too big to survive on carrion alone (finding carrion, no matter how good one's olfactory senses, is always a matter of chance that can be quite risky for a very lange animal requiring a massive food intake), but your family group explanation seems like a good fit as well. Faster youngsters do the killing, slower adults finish off the prey. This way the adults would be ensured of food on a regular basis. I guess the adults wouldn't survive on their own then.

[BishopIII]

 Your reasoning is identical to mine! I'd always thought that a five to seven ton animal could never make a living as a scavenger, although it could on occasion be a thief, stealing carcasses from smaller animals. My theory is the family group theory, although Phil Currie has similar ideas. I think he was the guy who excavated the family group of Albertosaurus in Canada, hence the reasoning. There were up to twelve individuals of varying size, and presumably age groups, yet no other species was discovered, precluding the possibility of a natural predator trap (plus the rocks weren't fine mudstone shales like those in formerly boggy areas). The most likely explanation is that this was their 'camp' or nest. I'm gonna have to look this up again, I need to refresh my memory.
 
 T. rex was also considered to be the 'James Dean' of Dinosaurs (lived fast, died young): The oldest specimen ('Sue') was only around 26-29 years old when she died. They've calculated that, to grow at this rate, they'd have to put on at least a Kilo of meat per week (or even a couple of days, I forget the details, it's in an issue of NewScientist I have stashed somewhere upstairs) there would also likely be more than one hatchling (no doubt fluffy with down), which definitely puts the proverbial boot up the arse of the 'Scavenger Hypothesis' - how can anything find that much carrion, even with a rex's superior sense of smell? It's got to feed both adults and all babies, which were ravenous!

[BishopIII]

 Yeah, I was wrong, it is more like a Kilo a day, increasing with age, given to, let's say for argument's sake, four, then add the weight up, plus the large amount of food required by the parents (one would likely hang around to look after the little ones while the other adults hunted). The family would need several large carcasses a week. Can't do scavenging on that scale. Especially with such fast growth rates. The rate of growth in all the Dinosauria is incredible. Elegant proof of endothermy, that is!

[Dutch90]

What about sauropods? Warm-blooded animals need to eat ten times as much as cold-blooded ones, I can see cold-bloodedness being an advantage for such large herbivores. Even with a cold-blooded metabolism they'd need to consume insane amounts of plant material each day to stay alive.

[Neltharion]

Therapods are most likely to be warm blooded, they closely resemble Birds (Hell even T-Rex had hollow bones, which oddly suggests that they are lighter than thought, and could run faster than we originally thought), and birds have a warm blooded circulatory system, so its a safe(r) bet to say Therapods are warm blooded.

Sauropods, at least the large ones would benefit more from being a cold-blooded creature, they waste less energy and need to eat less as Dutch90 suggested.