Re: Prehistoric Park

["Simon M. Clabby" <dinowight@yahoo.co.uk>]

Personally, If I was attempting to breed Triceratops,
I'd take more than just one male. I'd have thought
that some females would have been useful, but Nigel
Marvin seems to disagree...

--- Eric Martichuski <herewiss13@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've been enjoying the new paleontological series on
> Animal Planet with 
> Nigel Marvin at his most suicidal.  Tonight he went
> hunting for Microraptor 
> gui, ran into some Incisivosaurus and managed to
> capture an entire herd of 
> Titanosaurs, much to the consternation of zookeeper
> Bob (whose enthusiasm 
> and befuddlement is a joy to watch).  This is all
> very well.  But one of his 
> cameramen also got mobbed by a pack of Mei long who
> were after his beef 
> jerky.
> 
> This is a man who ventures into unknown ecosystems
> with a CO2 meter (for 
> volcanic fumes), but no firearms.  By rights he
> should have been eaten half 
> a dozen times by now, by things ranging from T-rex
> to short-faced cave 
> bears...all of which he's managed to outrun on foot.
>  It's worse than all 
> those wildlife celebrities who pick up venomous
> snakes...seriously!
> 
> The outrageous cheating-of-death aside, the conceit
> of the show: capturing 
> extinct animals for breeding programs as we do with
> extant ones works quite 
> well.  The "time portal" is never explained, just
> assumed (two probes, stuck 
> in the ground and activated, form a "time field"
> between them), and a 
> portion of each show is devoted to the care and
> observation of animals 
> captured in previous episodes, so there is both a
> "wild" and a "zoo" 
> story-line.
> 
> _However_, entertaining as it is as fiction; I find
> that the existence of 
> time-travel is just too huge to be treated in such a
> haphazard manner.  
> They're just wandering randomly through time
> snagging 1-2 species per jaunt.
> 
> As professionals: how would you organize a
> comprehensive research program if 
> you had the earth's entire history to range through?
>  Let's say the 
> time-machine can pinpoint things with 10,000 year
> accuracy (which should 
> avoid paradoxes with most all of recorded human
> history).  Do you make 
> sweeps from 4 billion years ago and move forward? 
> Move back from the 
> present?  How much geographic sampling would you
> need?  Is there some rough 
> sweep you could do before starting in on all the
> fine details?
> 
> Obviously, there are points in time which particular
> individuals would be 
> most curious about.  Extinction events, the
> emergence of "firsts" (first 
> land animals, first angiosperms, origins of flight,
> etc.), and other 
> specific mysteries.  But those are all tiny compared
> to the vast scope of 
> data available for investigation.  How would you
> even _start_ to organize a 
> comprehensive plan?
> 
> Eric
> 
> P.S.  Nigel pronounces it "FOR-us-RAW-kid"...just in
> case anyone was 
> curious.
> 
> P.P.S.  On an unrelated note, would anyone happen to
> know, off the top of 
> their heads, a greek/latin cognate for
> "lighter-than-air" or "floating".  
> I'm creating some balloon-creatures for a novel and
> while "pneumathere" has 
> a nice ring to it, it's not quite what I was hoping
> for.
>
______________________________________________________________________
> "There is no other wisdom,
> And no other hope for us
> But that we grow wise. -- Diane Duane
>
______________________________________________________________________
> 
>
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