You find yourself in the cretaceous

[lpetrich]

The original  Velociraptor rather than the Jurassic Park ones was about the size of a wild turkey. But it had teeth instead of a beak, a long tail, and claws on its front limbs. It likely had feathers, making it look like some freaky wild turkey.

But a somewhat close relative,  Utahraptor did grow to human size.

 Feathered dinosaur - which (non-avian) dinosaurs had feathers?

 

[SLD]

The original  Velociraptor rather than the Jurassic Park ones was about the size of a wild turkey. But it had teeth instead of a beak, a long tail, and claws on its front limbs. It likely had feathers, making it look like some freaky wild turkey.

But a somewhat close relative,  Utahraptor did grow to human size.

 Feathered dinosaur - which (non-avian) dinosaurs had feathers?

That’s another good point. It’s not like all of these dinosaurs occupied the same ecological niche or even the same times. T. Rex was not all over North America. I don’t believe many large predators made it to the Appalachian areas. Or maybe they just avoided the highlands.

The small raptors were in Asia. The larger ones in Utah. But how much further away? It’s not even clear that they were around 65 million years ago, which is when the movie takes place.

And how prevalent was T. Rex. I suspect quite rare. They’d migrated over from Asia to Alaska, and down Canada before penetrating the lower 48. But how far south did they make it, and what were their family sizes. Predators are far less numerous than prey. Usually by 35 - 1. Or so. Avoid the herds of Edmontosaurus and you’d probably never even see one. Stick to the high ground too.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

if you're pushing for the scientific realism angle, how about addressing the absurd idea of time travel back in time, rather than focusing on whether the T-Rex would consider us a tasty meal?

Right. Obviously you’d make more of a meal for say, a velociraptor.

Yes. A raptor would be a threat. Especially if they are pack hunters. Remember that most raptors though are not as big as Jurassic Park, more dog size.

View attachment 42495


As for time travel, well I do have a scientific theory on that. If we accept Everett’s many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, then the universe splits. Einstein said FTL was absurd because you can’t time travel, and because there’s no tourists from the future. True. But what if you split the universe with QM? You’d go back into a different time that branched off from our universe the moment you arrived.

OK. It’s far fetched. But it’s a fun thought.

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though. Realistically, it would only be used to escape or under really dire circumstances (I'm thinking of David Weber, The Apocalypse Troll--at the start they are in a universe where the issue of time travel is unresolved. Their stardrive can in theory be pushed to do it, but is it simply suicide, time jump, or time jump with a universe split? The bad guys are caught in the act of attempting it, the good guys who catch them have to pursue no matter what.)

 

[bilby]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

 

[SLD]

if you're pushing for the scientific realism angle, how about addressing the absurd idea of time travel back in time, rather than focusing on whether the T-Rex would consider us a tasty meal?

Right. Obviously you’d make more of a meal for say, a velociraptor.

Yes. A raptor would be a threat. Especially if they are pack hunters. Remember that most raptors though are not as big as Jurassic Park, more dog size.

View attachment 42495


As for time travel, well I do have a scientific theory on that. If we accept Everett’s many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, then the universe splits. Einstein said FTL was absurd because you can’t time travel, and because there’s no tourists from the future. True. But what if you split the universe with QM? You’d go back into a different time that branched off from our universe the moment you arrived.

OK. It’s far fetched. But it’s a fun thought.

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though. Realistically, it would only be used to escape or under really dire circumstances (I'm thinking of David Weber, The Apocalypse Troll--at the start they are in a universe where the issue of time travel is unresolved. Their stardrive can in theory be pushed to do it, but is it simply suicide, time jump, or time jump with a universe split? The bad guys are caught in the act of attempting it, the good guys who catch them have to pursue no matter what.)

Not home, but to another alternate universe virtually indistinguishable from the one you left.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

Except I expect the changes would diverge, not converge.

 

[Jokodo]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

Except I expect the changes would diverge, not converge.

In an infinite number...

 

[Elixir]

It doesn’t even require choice. I put my keys somewhere without thinking, and later swear they must have vanished into a parallel universe. Then I find them in the refrigerator, and know for sure.

 

[lpetrich]

I think that people like dinosaurs because they are just plain weird by present-day standards, much more so than most Cenozoic fauna.

The  Evolution of the horse is a well-known account of evolution over the Cenozoic Era, and it must be noted that the horse ancestors and close relatives of ancestors over that time do not look much different from present-day horses, at least if one does not look very closely at them. One finds such trends as growing larger, enlargement of middle toes, reduction and loss of side toes, and molars' crowns growing tall, but except for size, one finds them by looking closely. These horse ancestors are not only the ancestors of strict-sense horses, but also of donkeys and zebras; the other present-day broad-sense horses, which diverged over the last few million years.

Also, if one does not look very closely, and if one ignores antlers and horns, horses look much like deer and antelope and the like.

Rhinoceros-like animals evolved several times over the Cenozoic, like  Uintatherium and  Brontotheriidae (56 - 34 Mya) and  Arsinoitherium (36 - 27 Mya)

Pig-like animals also evolved more than once. Tapirs are odd-toed ungulates, related to horses and rhinos, while pigs are even-toed ones, related to camels and hippopotamuses and cetaceans and ruminants (giraffes, deer, antelope, cows, sheep, goats, ...).

Weirdness by present-day standards is hard to find over the Cenozoic, but I nominate  Chalicothere an odd sort of odd-toed ungulate. A recent one (~ 10 to 6 Mya)  Anisodon looked vaguely like a horse, but with front limbs almost twice as long as its hind limbs, and with claws instead of hooves. The usual theory is that the animals pulled down tree branches with their clawed front limbs so they can eat those branches' leaves.

 

[lpetrich]

Even as far back as the  Paleocene Epoch, the fauna still does not look all that much different from present-day fauna. Looking at the largest animals, I find in the mid-Paleocene  Barylambda which was the size of a small horse, but with five-digit feet much like those of rats and opossums. BTW, opossums are sometimes called "living fossils", from their resembling late-Mesozoic mammals. Also in the mid-Paleocene, I find  Gastornis a bird that was roughly the size of a present-day ostrich, though with a much thicker neck and bigger head. A bit on the weird side, I must note.

But before the K-Pg mass extinction, the larger fauna looked very different. Here are some size champions from around that time.  Dinosaur size

 Triceratops looked something like a rhinoceros, but was elephant-sized, had horns over its eyes, and a neck frill. It had a beak and back teeth.

 Ankylosaurus had human height and a three times longer body. It had armor plates on its back, a long tail, and also a beak and back teeth.

 Edmontosaurus was a very large hadrosaur, roughly elephant-sized, but with a tail about as long as the rest of its body. Its head was flattened at the front end, the duckbill feature. It had a beak and back teeth, continually growing new ones.

 Titanosauria were sauropods, the largest land animals known to exist. They had elephant-like bodies, but long necks, small heads, and long tails. Their long necks were likely a way to avoid moving very much when eating. The animal could turn its neck from side to side, eating as it goes.

 Tyrannosaurus - elephant-sized, but with conical teeth, bipedal, and with a long tail, was among the largest land predators that ever lived. Stephen Jay Gould recalled being very impressed by a mounted skeleton of one when he was a little boy.

There were plenty of smaller ones, but many of them had similar sorts of features.

Some of the smaller ones likely had feathers:  Feathered dinosaur -  List of non-avian dinosaur species preserved with evidence of feathers - most of the evidence is from theropods, the group that includes tyrannosaurs and birds. Not only small ones like  Archaeopteryx but also  Ornithomimus - roughly human-sized with a hip height of around 1 meter.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

Except I expect the changes would diverge, not converge.

I would expect that they would do both, each an infinite number of times. Infinities are like that.

 

[Politesse]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

Except I expect the changes would diverge, not converge.

In an infinite number...

Counted them, did you?

 

[bilby]

Yeah, time travel doesn't cause a problem if it causes a split. That seems to suggest you could never go home, though.

Not really; I mean, it does as a technicality, but would you know or care if you arrived back in 2023 to discover that you were in fact in an alternate universe in which the sole difference was a few events seventy million years ago, whose traces were reversed by subsequent events?

In an infinite number of alternate universes, there exists an infinite subset that are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.

Except I expect the changes would diverge, not converge.

In an infinite number...

Counted them, did you?

Took forever.