Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Humanity today revels in the carefully crafted delusion that we have extracted ourselves from the natural system that gave us birth. Too many of us fail to understand that all of our efforts to create an entirely artificial environment are teetering on the brink of disaster. We prefer to believe our increasing egregious abuses will continue to be tolerated by an increasingly cowed and subdued nature.

But arrogant exploitation of the environment without regard for the consequences is not a new phenomenon in the history of our planet. It's been tried before with disastrous results even worse than many predict will eventually befall us as a result of our current irresponsible vandalism of the environment.

We've come a long way in understanding dinosaurs in recent years. Only a couple decades ago dinosaurs were thought to be cold blooded slow moving tail draggers that abandoned their eggs. We wanted to think of them as just overgrown versions of modern lizards.

Scientists now suggest that some if not all dinosaurs were active warm blooded creatures adapted to a variety of environments, some even inhabited the cold polar regions. Instead of dragging their tails like modern day alligators, most dinosaurs carried their tails off the ground as balancing devices. Prehistoric tracks indicate that some dinosaurs could run as fast as modern day mammals. Some dinosaurs lived in social groups ranging in size up to large herds. There is evidence that at least some species exhibited parental attachments to their young, taking care of them through a period of juvenile dependency.

Interesting new information is also surfacing regarding the relationship between dinosaurs and their environment. Many dinosaur species became extinct long before the final cataclysm that finished the last of them off. Dinosaur populations and the variety of species were in decline long before the end, and scientists studying the evolution of the plants on which dinosaurs fed think they may have an explanation why. The dinosaurs were being killed off by their food.

To understand how this situation developed, we must first consider the parallel evolution of both dinosaurs and their food species. Just as today, the prehistoric world had a food chain, with all predators and scavengers ultimately dependent on the lowest level herbivores. When we think of dinosaurs, we like to concentrate on the carnivores at the top of the pyramid like tyrannosaurs rex. But no matter how impressively vicious and aggressive the giant teeth and claws on legs might have been, without a solid foundation the food chain that supported all of the super-predators proved to be nothing but a fragile house of cards.

The dominant plant species at the time were coniferous. These types of plants are ecologically relatively "freestanding", relying only on physical forces like wind and rain for reproduction and distribution. While functionally adequate, the wind and rain only provided limited potentials for expanding the range of the plants and mixing genetic material. Since most of the plant species available for consumption were coniferous, by default the low level herbivores at the bottom of the dinosaur food pyramid were largely dependent on consuming coniferous plants.

The key factor is that the relationship between herbivore dinosaurs and their target food plants was entirely exploitive. All benefits from the relationship went to the consuming dinosaurs, while none went to the plants being consumed. The advantages to the herbivore dinosaurs were obvious - they extracted sustenance and survival by eating the plants. The more they could eat the bigger they grew and the greater their reproductive success. The evolutionary tendency of herbivore dinosaurs was entirely directed toward developing more effective means of consuming plants - usually specializing on a specific primary food plant species.

From the plant's perspective, the predation of the dinosaurs was entirely negative - being eaten offered no advantages, while avoiding being eaten provided the key to survival. Dinosaurs failed to provide any evolutionarily meaningful reason for plants to accommodate their survival. The evolution of coniferous plants therefore favored those most effective at discouraging exploitation by dinosaurs - especially those that became inedible.

Many herbivore dinosaurs appear to have been dependent on a limited assortment of coniferous plants, and when their primary source of food mutated, they were unable to exploit the new strains and died out. The last herbivore dinosaurs evolved the ability to exploit a wider variety of plant species, but were still very limited. None of the dinosaurs were able to exploit the new angiosperms (flowering plants) that were displacing the more primitive coniferous plants over most of the planet. The days of the dinosaurs may have been numbered even without a big rock falling out of the sky.

In one of history's greatest triumphs of delicate beauty over brute violence, the dainty flower played a powerful hand in the downfall of the mighty dinosaurs. Angiosperms appeared on the Earth late in the dinosaur era, and quickly began displacing the coniferous plants, eliminating the dinosaur's food sources.

One of the major reasons angiosperms were so successful is that they developed a symbiotic relationship with the animals around them. To start with, the primary purpose of flowers is to enlist largely insect assistance in spreading the plant's genetic material and help in the plant's reproductive strategy. In order to make sure the insect will cooperate in distributing its pollen, the plant provides a benefit to the insect in the form of nectar. Insects have proven far more effective in spreading pollen than the wind.

The angiosperm strategy for distributing seeds is even more dependent on animal assistance. Angiosperm seeds have tough shells that can survive a trip through an animal's digestive system. To make sure the animal will eat the seed, the plant wraps it in fruit that benefits the animal. The animal tends to travel a distance before excreting (planting) the seed, thereby helping the plant increase its range. Animals have proven far more effective in spreading seeds than the wind.

As a result, animals and angiosperms have developed a strong evolutionary self-interest in each other's continued survival. Animals have obviously benefited from the high quality food proved by cooperative angiosperms. With the help of animals, angiosperms have spread to become the dominant wild plant type around the world, forcing the older coniferous plants into leftover niches unsuitable for angiosperms. And as the new plants spread world wide and achieved dominance, they ensured the matching dominance of the animals on which they depended - and which depended on them.

Even before the final catastrophic die-off, dinosaurs found themselves under increasing pressure from multiple directions. Not only were there fewer and fewer coniferous plants on which to feed, but those remaining were becoming increasing able to defend themselves from being eaten. Hunger will always humble the mighty.

Humanity is currently deciding whether it will continue its symbiotic relationship with the rest of our ecosystem, or transform itself into the next dinosaurs. We think we've subdued nature and bent it to serve our desires, but nature has repeatedly demonstrated its limited tolerance for abuse. Mankind has only existed for the blink of an eye in geologic time, hardly long enough for nature to even begin to react to our impacts. We'd like to think our powers are as grand as our egos, but nature had no problem dealing with far more robust and durable creatures than humans in the past. Only by working with nature instead of against it can we ensure there will continue to be a place for humanity in Earth's ecosystem.