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Woolly Rhinos Evolved to be Extinct?!; The article explains it better than I can.
Topic Started: Sep 11 2017, 12:46 PM (750 Views)
Troy Troodon
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Evolution appearently drove wolly rhinos to extinction... wait, what?!
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lamna
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The actual information is interesting, but this article and a lot of the other coverage (all these sites copy from one another) is terrible.

This is a symptom, not the cause.
Edited by lamna, Sep 11 2017, 01:20 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Why exactly could this not simply be a beneficial adaptation that we haven't found the use for yet?
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peashyjah
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Little
Sep 11 2017, 02:27 PM
Why exactly could this not simply be a beneficial adaptation that we haven't found the use for yet?
I agree too.
Edited by peashyjah, Sep 11 2017, 05:21 PM.
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Carlos
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All these excuses against overhunting when the correlation between megafaunal extinctions and better hunting technology has been made for a while are starting to get silly.

First the Wrangel Island mammoths, now this.
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Troy Troodon
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Sep 11 2017, 05:35 PM
All these excuses against overhunting when the correlation between megafaunal extinctions and better hunting technology has been made for a while are starting to get silly.

First the Wrangel Island mammoths, now this.
Mammoths too, huh?!
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Tartarus
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That article seemed rather silly to me. It is claimed that the woolly rhino's cervical ribs led to their demise but the justification for this claim seems pretty weak. I reckon it more likely that their unusual cervical ribs were either just a minor contributing factor to their demise or that they had nothing to do with it whatsoever (indeed, as Little already pointed out, they could for all we know have actually been a beneficial feature but we just have yet to find how they benefited the rhinos).
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ÐK
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lamna
Sep 11 2017, 01:20 PM
The actual information is interesting, but this article and a lot of the other coverage (all these sites copy from one another) is terrible.

This is a symptom, not the cause.
Holben Lamna seems to be the only one who hasn't missed the point here. The study never claims that woolly rhinos were killed off by rogue cervical ribs that started randomly developing. The study just found that woolly rhinos in the Late Pleistocene had unusually high incidence cervical ribs, which in living mammals is associated with disease and congenital abnormalities. They could therefore be indicating that something was wrong with the younger woolly rhino populations, possibly through inbreeding or harsh environmental stresses that impact pregnancies, that was causing their development. The cervical ribs could be a side-effect of whatever was causing their extinction, not the root cause itself.
Edited by ÐK, Sep 12 2017, 03:08 PM.
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Flisch
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ÐK
Sep 12 2017, 08:26 AM
lamna
Sep 11 2017, 01:20 PM
The actual information is interesting, but this article and a lot of the other coverage (all these sites copy from one another) is terrible.

This is a symptom, not the cause.
Holben seems to be the only one who hasn't missed the point here. The study never claims that woolly rhinos were killed off by rogue cervical ribs that started randomly developing. The study just found that woolly rhinos in the Late Pleistocene had unusually high incidence cervical ribs, which in living mammals is associated with disease and congenital abnormalities. They could therefore be indicating that something was wrong with the younger woolly rhino populations, possibly through inbreeding or harsh environmental stresses that impact pregnancies, that was causing their development. The cervical ribs could be a side-effect of whatever was causing their extinction, not the root cause itself.
Isn't that, kind of, exactly what Lamna said?
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ÐK
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Flisch
Sep 12 2017, 02:10 PM
Isn't that, kind of, exactly what Lamna said?
H*ck, that's who I meant, Lamna didn't miss the point, not Holben. I don't know why my brain did whatever it did there.
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I'm sorry but in what alternative universe would thousands of zebras be sent back in time by some sort of illegal time travel group to change history and preparing them by making gigantic working animatronic allosaurs?

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LittleLazyLass
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Well, maybe if the thread wasn't horribly titled and it didn't link to a crappy news article instead of the study we'd have known better.
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Sep 12 2017, 03:15 PM
Well, maybe if the thread wasn't horribly titled and it didn't link to a crappy news article instead of the study we'd have known better.
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Dragonthunders
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No offense, but really the title is terrible indeed as well the article share, the writer of the article in gizmodo misinterpreted and linked one thing with another with poor undestanding of what is correlated from the ScienceNews article which refers to the end (This one btw) which links to the original article
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Troy Troodon
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Little
Sep 12 2017, 03:15 PM
Well, maybe if the thread wasn't horribly titled and it didn't link to a crappy news article instead of the study we'd have known better.

Dragonthunders
Sep 12 2017, 05:07 PM
No offense, but really the title is terrible indeed as well the article share, the writer of the article in gizmodo misinterpreted and linked one thing with another with poor undestanding of what is correlated from the ScienceNews article which refers to the end (This one btw) which links to the original article

And on today's episode of Troy makes himself look like a fool on this site...
Edited by Troy Troodon, Sep 12 2017, 05:32 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Eh, most people seem to link to news article. I still dislike it, but you're not special in that regard.
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