Contents Updated: Thursday, August 05, 1999
Looking beyond mankind's ego, there was another obstacle to the idea of intelligence in dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were believed to be cold-blooded—they were reptiles. Warm-blood seems necessary for a high capacity brain—reptiles and lizards are cold-blooded. Today there is no such objection to the evolution of intelligence in the dinosaurs—they were warm-blooded! They were not cold-blooded and sluggish reptiles—they were not reptiles. And they were active.
Given warm-blooded animals, intelligence could have evolved repeatedly—a conclusion directly contradicting Gould's. On passing a certain threshold intelligence would evolve increasingly rapidly. If the dinosaurs reached the threshold, they could have become intelligent in a geologically short time. Using human evolution as our only example, we can estimate the timescale using the molecular clock.
The molecular clock depends upon natural selection being neutral towards most genes. A beneficial gene survives in a population, but so does a gene that has no particular affect for good or ill. Only genes which confer manifestly disadvantageous characteristics die out through natural selection. Genes continually mutate at a fairly constant rate and, providing that the mutant genes are not harmful, they will spread among a population in which interbreeding freely occurs. Each species therefore has a common gene pool. Once species have separated, their genes no longer mix, there is no longer a common gene pool. If a mutant gene now arises in an animal of one species, it will spread among that species but it cannot spread into the other. The longer the time since two species separated, the greater the difference in genetic and protein structure. Comparing genetic and protein differences between species, and knowing the rate at which the differences multiply, allows us to calculate when speciation occurred.
In 1967, using a molecular dating technique, Victor Sarich and Allan Wilson showed that man diverged from the African apes as little as five million years ago. For orthodox paleontologists this was far too short a time. It spoilt their theories and put us too close for the good of their egos to the apes. They abused Sarich and Wilson and ignored their results for years. Gribbon and Cherfas say it was as if theoretical astronomers had ignored the discovery of pulsars. Yet only a few million years ago—perhaps seven million from more recent work—our ancestors were the creatures from which also descended present day chimpanzees. From that time a line branched off the common stock that became human. Mankind apparently reached the threshold of intelligence within perhaps the last five million years.
Sixty of the sixty five million years of domination of the earth by mammals elapsed before the intelligent model went into the prototype stage, but then in only about five million years technological society evolved. Sixty million years of mammalian evolution to arrive at the threshold of intelligence, yet the dinosaurs had 140 million years at the top—twice as long as the mammals. Could animals that succeeded so well for so long fail to develop an intelligent version of their own? There must be a possibility that dinosaurs too achieved thinking status... but 65 million years before us.
If intelligent dinosaurs existed, they must have made a big impression on their world, just as we have. Where then are their ruins, their relics and their kitchen middens?
Consider the following questions. Out of about 12 billion human people that have ever lived on the earth, how many have left any mark? What remains of their accumulated experience? Out of an estimated 80 million species of living organisms on the earth today how many will be classified before they become extinct? How many will leave any fossil remains? How many of the millions of insect species? How many of the estimated 8600 birds? How many of the 4000 mammals? Hardly any! Most living things, intelligent or otherwise do not leave a trace. Species that are constructed mainly of soft tissues which decay quickly effectively leave no fossils. Species that live in environments unconducive to fossilization leave few fossils. Species that evolve and die off quickly leave few remains. Technological civilization only began two hundred years ago and might end in the next hundred. Human civilization, hugely impressive to us, is only an oily smear in the geological record.
In the millions of years that the dinosaurs dominated the earth, thousands of dinosaur species, billions of individuals, have left no trace. If just one of those species came to prominence very rapidly in evolutionary terms, as mankind has, perhaps making no significant mark until its last few centuries, would much be seen in the rocks 65 million years later? I think not, even if anyone were looking for signs of intelligence. And who's looking? Not the paleontologists!
These views are speculative. Experts disdain speculation—though one of Britain's leading thinkers, Richard Dawkins, allows that careful selective speculation can be constructive. Speculative hypotheses face a contradiction: they need more proof than less controversial ones, yet often the absence of convincing evidence is the reason why speculation is necessary. That is true here: direct evidence is sparse and badly documented. Indirect or circumstantial evidence is more plentiful, is generally sound, and constitutes the greater part of this book.
Mostly it is culled from popular but authoritative works of science, many written in the last decade, like Bakker's book, The Dinosaur Heresies. Sources are given in the bibliography for the reader wishing to pursue the detail. Anecdotal evidence fills gaps where studies have been inadequate.
Experts, though they defend their own dogmas as determinedly as any medieval prelate, are liable to regard unorthodox ideas with contempt and show little eagerness to investigate them. These experts are often wrong. Though they are technically good at determining facts, they are prone to ignore troublesome ones, and continue to market outmoded theories until well beyond their sell-by date. Worse still, some are inclined to assert whatever is most acceptable to their peers or their paymasters. It pays to be skeptical about such people and wary of their assertions.
Independent writers and researchers in the last couple of decades have put together sufficient to challenge the paleontological dogmatists. Unorthodox proposals deserve attention if only to provoke the experts to justify their conventional arguments and thus periodically to force them into an honest reappraisal. My speculations might stimulate a more open-minded look at past events. Anomalies in old rock strata might be taken seriously and accurately dated rather than ignored. Curious artifacts and impressions in very ancient rocks, of the Cretaceous Period particularly, might be studied systematically to see whether an adequate theory can be constructed to explain them.
More importantly we should examine the parallels between the present time and mass extinctions of the Cretaceous. Tens of millions of years hence, geologists will simply see a sudden reduction in diversity terminating the Tertiary epoch. Will they notice that a couple of inches of sediment contain traces of one species of ape which briefly exploded in numbers prior to the mass extinction? It is doubtful.
Is the mass extinction of species the only legacy we wish to leave, as our sapient dinosaurian antecedents did? If my probe into time's vaults motivates enough people to disown our dinosaur heritage and to stop our assault on the planet, we might yet, unlike the dinosaurs, survive.
I am not optimistic!