The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

"Because I like it when Art Major Biology uses a dose of Truth in Television and Shown Their Work as part of its foundation."

I agree. It's like taking the Enterprise and ending up with the Alcubierre drive. Or taking the Rocinante from the Expanse and ending up with a He-Deuterium fusion drive. It's not really a direct extrapolation, but the effort to close the gap is both fun and educational.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jan 2nd 2020 at 4:19:52 AM

Except that is not the case with the Astartes. If anything they have doubled down on how weird it is given the whole Primaris thing.

Heck, the more recent works have also strongly implied that their source material, the Primarchs, were also created using the Warp.

Edited by M84 on Jan 2nd 2020 at 8:32:36 PM

To expand on that, josh reynold said in a pod cast that he interpreted the primarch material to have genetic memory, which it fix the idea of ferrus manus clone remenbering what it happen to fulgrin in istavaan or horus clone knowing abbadon.

So yeah in a sense geneseed is psychic material.

The Chinese paddlefish has been declared extinct, having been last sighted in 2009.

Also TIL that the Chinese river dolphin (baiji) is still only classified as functionally extinct despite the last documented sighting being all the way back in 2006.

The Primaris are only distinguished by possessing three things:

• An organ that simply magnifies the effects of multiple "normal" Astartes organs (chiefly the Ossmodula and Biscopea). Hardly any weirder than the rest of the Astartes implants.
• "Coils" of metallic composition that are implanted into the muscles, tendons and ligaments for extra Super-Strength and Super-Toughness. Just a roundabout way of creating artificial muscles.
• An organ that releases what amount to combat stimulants that also supercharge the Space Marine's Healing Factor. A mix of Bottled Heroic Resolve and Super Serum that is comparable to adrenaline and some real-life performance-enhancing drugs; just because the healing part may work impossibly fast by our current understanding of biology doesn't mean that it's impossible to at least figure out the most likely factors that could serve as a realistic starting point.

Hell, a few of Kyle Hill's recent Because Science videos have actually provided a realistic starting point for gengineering-induced amplification of muscular development, by noting that we already do this in real life with the Belgian Blue cow and several dog breeds via inducing myostatin-induced muscle hypertrophy (which itself can happen in humans as a rare genetic condition). It's not hard to expand on this to Super-Strength territory via supposing one or more additional gene mutations that may not exist IRL but do exist in the fictional setting of the story.

As for involvement of Warp/psychic magic in the process, IMO that exists primarily to Hand Wave things like Space Marines and Primarch clones alike inheriting memories from long-dead Primarchs and/or Space Marines, Space Marines being able to absorb someone's memories of their life experiences and learned skills by consuming their flesh, and other finer details of Astartes/Primarch biology that heavily strain if not outright break Willing Suspension of Disbelief if you actually scrunitize them.

Seriously, I can't help but feel that you're purposefully encouraging a close-minded way of thinking towards anything in speculative fiction that isn't a Physics Plus or harder form of sci-fi.

I do not see the point in trying to figure out how to make something that in canon is literally impossible without messing with reality work in real life.

Forget things like a second heart, there’s a reason people don’t usually grow seven or eight feet tall. People who are that tall in real life have unbelievable amounts of issues with their joints, and with all the extra strain a space marine’s joints would have on them they’d be shot within a decade. They’d probably need the power armor just to stand up.

When you have things like a thousand-member chapter somehow winning multi-planetary scale wars single handedly I think it’s fair to say you’ve thrown any interest in realism out the window.

The answer to the "how to do massive and do well on land" question is always "live in high oxygen and do the quad or more" unless you're furred/ filaments and fighting the cold... on all fours. At least sometimes (pterosaurs).

Alternatively, go back to the sea.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 3rd 2020 at 8:28:42 PM

Airsacs and hollow bones, that's how the dinosaurs did it.

Even the bipedal ones were dwarfed by those who went quad.

Or returned to the sea. I don't care what anybody says: the most terrible of lizards was more monitor than dino. The mosasaurs, baby: Nightmare Fuel even for sharks.

To be fair, there is a tendecy of what I call "ficional technological aplicability" which is "How close we can to actually replicate something?"

I mean nerd have being going on how to make a lightsaber, arguing about how to make the close thing to astartes is okey in my book.

I'm curious, how didn't the mosasaurs run into any "already fulfilled niches" issues like presumably any current monitor lizard trying to go down their path? Same way cetaceans did?

Because ichthyosaurs focused on being what dolphins/porpoises are currently being and mosasaurs got the time to hog (and perfect) the whale/seal/otter niches?

When mammals got a shot, we went all in on all of the niches. Surviving land-based monitors got themselves a little too isolated/ concentrated in one hemisphere and temperature band to explode in population (and therefore couldn't diversify quickly enough) after their cousins pegged it.

Just an oopsie, really.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 3rd 2020 at 9:54:36 AM

Mosasaurs became widespread AFTER Ichthyosaurs and Pliosaurs went extinct; there was a turnover of some scale in the mid Cretaceous, but not noticeable enough to split said period in 2.

Mosasaurs are also closer to snakes than to anything else, and snakes DO have marine representation.

Monitors are busy being highly active lizards.

Edited by Eriorguez on Jan 4th 2020 at 3:44:38 PM

Question—how is the seal niche different from the dolphin niche?

Dolphins are more pelagic and most of the time can't chew; seals are more generalist.

Then again, they have plenty of overlap nowadays; elephant seals are mini sperm whales, crabeater seals are actually krill filter feeders...

Dolphins are purely marine mammals, they can't go on land. While the aren't exactly what you'd call graceful the pinnipeds are technically still semi-terrestrial.

I feel silly. Just realised a few 'saurs did bob back into the sea in a big way: penguins, puffins, auks and eiders.

Pelicans, gulls, terns and albatrosses don't really count: they've done the pterasaur thing.

Pterosaurs didn't come from the Dinosauria region of France. They're just sparkling archosaurs.

Since when do nice, insulating filaments do the cheap vampire thing? <puzzled>

Pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs just the same way manatees aren't elephants tho.

Yup. But, they are still 'saurs. Archosaurs. Which dinos were, too. <confused>

Who said they were dinos?

(I love the fact that, if given the chance, 'saurs can and will choose the swim/soar option... when they don't go the swim and fly one, of course. Pterasaurs and most birbs: cousins on the same page, if in different ways. Mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and penguins: in it for the swim of it. Team flightless/swimless: meh — who needs it when you can kick?)

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 5th 2020 at 3:16:04 PM

Mosasaurs are not archosaurs. And mammals did so as well; no combined flying-swimming approach outside of birds, Pteranodonts potentially being able to do so nonwithstanding.

Yup. But... still 'saurs. It's kinda in the name, mate. Lizards be lizards... Even warmish-blooded ones what swim and have bites to make you worry. Feathers may sometimes get included in long lost cousins.

Reptilia. Is a thing. With extended cousins in it. All in all, Animals are great. Not as impressive as Team Fungi, but not bad.

Seriously. I never said Mosasaurs were archasaurs, either. I pointed out their monitor-ness (closest living cousins with similar basic body plans; sorry snakes).

<confused>

Man, you DO sound kinda... spaced out. You alright?