{"id":13321,"date":"2022-06-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=13321"},"modified":"2022-06-08T10:36:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T08:36:19","slug":"could-we-live-alongside-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/2022\/06\/07\/could-we-live-alongside-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Could we live alongside dinosaurs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Could we live alongside dinosaurs?<\/h2>\n\n

In Jurassic World Dominion, <\/em>the toothy ones have integrated into society\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

by STEPHEN KELLY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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The new Jurassic World <\/em>movie envisions a time where dinosaurs are no longer every theme park\u2019s health and safety nightmare, but have instead started to reintegrate themselves as an ordinary part of our modern wildlife. <\/p>\n\n

Velociraptors <\/em>stalk the woods like wolves. Men on horseback herd Parasaurolophus <\/em>like cattle. <\/p>\n\n

A Tyrannosaurus rex <\/em>disrupts a drive-in movie like\u2026 a bloody massive Tyrannosaurus rex. <\/em>It\u2019s a premise that raises interesting questions. What impact would reintroducing dinosaurs into the wild have on our ecosystem, for example? And how would dinosaurs fare in a world so profoundly different to the one they originally lived in? <\/p>\n\n

Prof Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor on Jurassic World Dominion, <\/em>theorises that introducing, say, a T. rex <\/em>into the British countryside would not be a great idea. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThere have been many cases where a predator is introduced to an ecosystem and wreaks havoc,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s happened when we brought rats or dogs to new islands, so just imagine something at the T. rex\u2019s <\/em>scale. <\/p>\n\n

It could certainly lead to some mammals going extinct.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s not only carnivores that would disrupt the ecosystem, however. Giant herbivores like Brontosaurus <\/em>could have a profound effect on crops and other plants that are important medicinally, says Brusatte. \u201cEven the most conservative estimates say that sauropods would have eaten hundreds of pounds of leaves and stems every day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

But there is a question of whether dinosaurs could even survive long enough in our modern world to have any lasting impact at all. \u201cDinosaurs like Brontosaurus, Diplodocus <\/em>and Brachiosaurus <\/em>lived in the Jurassic,\u201d says Brusatte. \u201cThere were no fruits or flowers. Flowering plants were not even around until the early part of the Cretaceous. The vast majority of dinosaurs would never have seen a flower. Their diets were based on totally different types of plants. So whether they could even eat most of the food available to them today would be a really big question.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

And then there\u2019s our climate. There is much debate over whether dinosaurs were primarily cold-blooded or warm-blooded, with recent studies (and Brusatte) concluding that they were likely a mix of both. Either way, the answer would have a huge effect on how easily dinosaurs could adapt to our environment. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe global baseline for the temperature was much higher during the time of the dinosaurs,\u201d says Brusatte. \u201cIf they were fully warm-blooded, they could probably live in the kind of places that a lot of mammals could today. If they were more cold-blooded, that\u2019s different. We don\u2019t have crocodiles here in the UK for a reason. So if the dinosaurs did have more of a cold-blooded physiology, that\u2019s big swaths of the world today where they couldn\u2019t live.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

However, Brusatte is optimistic that dinosaurs could adapt to whatever the natural world throws at them \u2013 apart from an asteroid. Instead, he suggests that their biggest danger would be co-existing with the apex predator of humanity. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cI think, in reality, we would just kill all the dinosaurs,\u201d he says. \u201cI mean, if some mad scientist suddenly announced, \u2018hey, I\u2019ve cloned 10,000 T. rex <\/em>and they\u2019ve all escaped,\u2019 the first thing we would do is hunt them down. Maybe we would co-exist with Triceratops <\/em>or Brontosaurus, <\/em>but big predatory dinosaurs? <\/p>\n\n

We have such deadly weapons and are really good at killing off things \u2013 I don\u2019t think we would co-exist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\n\n
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VERDICT<\/strong>
Much as we might like to live alongside some dinosaur buddies, our aptitude for destroying wildlife and the world means it\u2019s probably not possible.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

by STEPHEN KELLY<\/strong> (@StephenPKelly<\/a><\/em>) Stephen is a culture and science writer, specialising in television and film.<\/p>\n\n

ILLUSTRATIONS: ADAM GALE, SAM BREWSTER<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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