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Venusian Wildlife
Topic Started: Sep 7 2008, 12:18 PM (1,822 Views)
Yorick
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It's been pretty much agreed upon that our sister planet Venus once was a habitable place before the greenhouse gases turned it into a toxic wasteland.

I wonder what was there before and what changed Venus so dramatically?

An intelligent civilization like ours that neglected to heed warnings about global warming and then it was too late. The damage was irreversible and could only get worse and worse as time passed by.

Before the event, there were no ice caps but it was a tropical planet where it was filled with marshes and jungles and more masrhes and jungles. (Think South America-like continents and islands all over and South-America-like weather all year-round.)

The oceans were vast and deep and teemed with life.

I don't imagine mammals evolved but certainly fish, mollusks and crustraceans and insects and arachnids and echnioderms and annelids. Perhaps some toucan-like birds with beautiful plumage evolved as well?
Edited by Yorick, Sep 7 2008, 06:42 PM.
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PousazPower
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Why the heck would fish, mollusks, arthropods, and birds evolve on a planet whose evolutionary history has absolutely nothing to do with Earth's (as far as we know) :o ?
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Carlos
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Plus, Venus was NEVER inhabited (except perhaps by bacteria); it was always too hot for multicellular life to evolve decently
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http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

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http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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Yorick
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Maybe not birds and reptiles but why couldn't fish and simpler animal phyla and classes resembling Earth's mollusks and crustraceans and other arthropods evolve in a lush, tropical environment like I believe Venus was? (Think the planet Naboo of "Star Wars").
Edited by Yorick, Nov 6 2008, 04:37 PM.
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Carlos
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Venus was always too hot to support complex life. Even if it existed it would had have a very short lifespan.
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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Reedstilt
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While it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Venus was always "too hot" for multicellular life, I'm not sure how we could know that. Our knowledge of that planet is incredibly limited.

Anyhow, I agree with others that say Venusian life, if you want to speculate about it, should be too similar to earth-life. It's got a lot of hurdles to conquer. Maybe if you timed this event to around 700-600 Mya, when Earth was, apparently, frozen over. Perhaps you could argue something was going on with the sun at that point which made Venus habitable for a time, enough to allow unicellular life to diversify into more complex forms, while freezing the Earth.
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Saxophlutist
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It would be very unlikely that any life on another planet would mimic life on Earth in anyways other than convergeant evolution. So the mimicry of something as specific as phyla is out of the question. So even animal-like life still couldn't be considered animals, being that they will most likely work very differently than metazoa here on Earth.
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Yorick
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Check this out, Johnny:

Quote:
 
Studies have suggested that several billion years ago Venus's atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now, and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.


Quote:
 
In the absence of the greenhouse effect caused by the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature at the surface of Venus would be quite similar to that on Earth.
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Cynovolans
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Just because the atmosphere may have been like Earth's does not still make it habitable. We thought that about Mars and now we believe that Mars was to acidic and salty to have ever held life. If we got onto Venus's surface discusions like this would be much easier.
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Saxophlutist
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If it were habitable though, there would only be time I believe for simple unicellular, or unicellular-equivalent life on the planet. So no complex life, and definitely no life resembling Earth life.
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lamna
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People could not cause a greenhouse effect on that scale without intending to.
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Reedstilt
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How long it takes to get from basic unicellular lifeforms to multicellular life is a difficult question. On Earth, it took somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 billion years, but through most of the time we just sat around as more or less the same type of bacterias for eons. Then, suddenly, we get three lineages of multicellular life (plants, animals, and fungi) showing up around relatively the same time. Seems like evolving multicellular life isn't so much a matter of time as a matter of getting favorable conditions.

A habitable Venus might have pulled it off much quicker than Earth did, if the conditions aligned themselves properly.
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Vultur-10


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Sep 7 2008, 07:23 PM
Just because the atmosphere may have been like Earth's does not still make it habitable. We thought that about Mars and now we believe that Mars was to acidic and salty to have ever held life. If we got onto Venus's surface discusions like this would be much easier.
Well, some believe Mars was too acidic and salty ... considering the conditions bacteria live in on Earth, I still have hope.
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ChumZar
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Don't you guys realize that there are around 98 elements known to occur in nature? There could be all sorts of different bases for life! IF Venus had life, it would probably have been silicon based, which isn't unlikely. There are virtually infinite numbers of chemical bonds that can occur in the universe, so, theoretically, there could be infinite different bases for life, in infinite numbers of scenarios. But I agree that Venusian life would be very different from Earth life. But nevertheless, Venusian lifeforms would be fun to speculate about.
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Saxophlutist
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Actually, while silicon is the best other element in theory, it really isn't good for life either. It isn't able to farm stable chemical bond in long chains like carbon is, unfortunately. So far, Carbon 's our best chance, the other elements don't seem to have what it takes, though this doesn't mean that there isn't room for non-traditional life. There are other mediums that in theory can support life.
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