Living Fossils

>>8866998
Not very likely. We're killing ourselves at an amazing rate, burning up resources faster then ever before and threatening future food supplies.

You see, that's a fish, and fish have the advantage of being in the ocean. Land creatures are way more vulnerable for things like climate change, asteroids, volcanoes but also things like cosmic events. Fish are protected not only by the atmosphere, but also by the ocean, wich gives them higher chances of survival.

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>>8867024

>You see, that's a fish, and fish have the advantage of being in the ocean. Land creatures are way more vulnerable for things like climate change, asteroids, volcanoes

The distant ancestors of Homo sapiens (picture related) managed to live through the asteroid impact that drove dinosaurs to extinction about 64,000,000 years ago, why can't Homo sapiens live through something like that?

>>8867064
They can live through it but the chances are just very small. It will likely be an offspring of Homo sapiens that makes it through. Just like the Plesiadapis isn't alive anymore.

>>8866998
Regardless of what some faggot say, the odds are quite good. If we can make it a few more hundred years without a mass extinction event (would have to be even more catastrophic than a giant meteor because we could still have a few pockets survive from that), we're basically golden. Each additional non-earth base humanity obtains and turns self-sufficient, our chances basically double. But even beyond that, our technology is almost at the point of near-absolute adaptability.

>>8867024
>not very likely
Extremely fucking likely anon.
Anon, global warming and overpopulation is an issue but it wont kill all of us. The worst global warming can do cause huge food and land shortages but that wont cause us to go extinct.
It's actually very unlikely we will go extinct any time soon and the longer time passes the less likely it becomes. Once humanity colonizes another planet it becomes nearly impossible.

>>8867092
This. People are scared of nukes are climate change but those are unlikely to kill all of us. There are 7 billion humans on the planet. Even if 99.99% of us die tomorrow there would be more than enough humans for a stable population.

>>8866998
>If the species Latimeria chalumnae was around 400,000,000 years ago and is still around today

nope. the species was not around 400 million years ago. 15 million years at most.

>>8867092
>>8867139
>>8867147
But if Homo sapiens manages to keep itself around for another 400,000,000 years, will those future humans look like today's humans, or will they look completely different?

>>8867325
Probably pretty similar in appearance, even if different inside. Keep in mind natural selection no longer applies to humans as we keep everyone alive and nearly everyone is given the chance to reproduce.

By 400000 years, the human ideal very likely might be similar to how it is currently, as we'd basically need to make a conscious effort to rewire our brain to think other forms are desirable to reproduce with. Of course that's so inconceivably far in the future it would be impossible to know for sure.

My guess for the average person in 402017? A brownish-asian looking person (think Brazillian) genetically and cybernetically engineered to be physically beautiful. But again, that's just a guess. That's very likely to be what the average person 4000 years from now is like, but 100x that is absolutely impossible to predict. Just keep in mind that any physical changes to humans will likely be self-imposed/selected.

>>8867347
Oh shit, I didn't realize it was millions. In that case, literally all bets are off. Suffice it to say whatever humans are (probably multiple different "species"), will have been created by humanity, not by natural selection.

>>8866998
>>8866998
We don't even have good chances of making another 300 years
t. Studies ecology and evolution

>>8867147
Humans don't exist buy themselves idiot

>>8867486
>All 7 billion humans will be wiped out by global warming
Top kek. Humanity has bottlenecked at like 40,000 before. Combine that fact and our technological capabilities and we could easily build and sustain many underground cities with many times the number necessary to keep humanity stable.

Anything short of total life/planetary annihilation and humans will remain.

>>8867147
taking you literally that's about 700 000 people so I think you're right but I think political forces and whatnot would have the remaining people die out or keep their population very low for a long time

>>8867064
Homo Sapiens isn't really adapted to any environment, nor locked into one. And we're driving an ongoing environmental change that no one really knows where it's headed. Being this free from constraints means that we can't really adapt to anything in the first place, and will likely see huge genetic changes and divergence in the future.

>>8867505
humans are adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle

>>8867521
And yet we aren't hunter gatherers so not sure where you're going with that.

>>8867536

>And yet we aren't hunter gatherers so not sure where you're going with that.

There are still millions of people around the world today living exactly like how their ancestors did thousands of years ago. There's still pastoral nomads and hunter-gatherers, and it's estimated that there's about 20 uncontacted tribes in the world today (in the Amazon and in New Guinea.)

>>8867541
>A tiny fraction of an exception disproves the claim
You cannot in any way classify human beings as a whole as hunter-gatherers. But again, what relevance does that have to that anon's point that we're not adapted to only specific environments?

>>8867547

>You cannot in any way classify human beings as a whole as hunter-gatherers. But again, what relevance does that have to that anon's point that we're not adapted to only specific environments?

If the global human population managed to have itself reduced down to about 2,500 hunter-gatherer individuals by the Toba catastrophe roughly around 70,000 years ago, I think it is more than likely that at the very least 2,500 hunter-gatherers can manage to survive in some isolated environment somewhere in South America, Central Africa, or New Guinea. Potentially even live through an asteroid impact event on the scale that occurred 60,000,000 years ago.

But if jesus died for our sins 2,000 years ago, how is the earth 400,000,000 years old. I don't think God's time game is that off

>>8867556
Okay? But it's far, far more likely that technologically advanced humans would just dig a hole in the side of a mountain and chill out in there.

>>8867569

>Okay? But it's far, far more likely that technologically advanced humans would just dig a hole in the side of a mountain and chill out in there.

Yes that's also very likely.

Point of the matter is that humans are highly adaptable and could potentially survive through just about anything thrown at them.

Not just easily die out due to global warming, global thermonuclear war, impact event, supervolcanic eruption, etc. as some have suggested in this thread.

>>8867501
>global warming
No biodiversty loss.
We don't exist independent of our ecological systems mong

>>8867501
>total life
Nah just the massive reduction of complex life we are in the middle of.
The same magnitude of the Jurassic-Triassic extinction the Dinos disappeared in
Its a break down of boundary conditions we are fucked, all the work is turning into entropy

>>8867582
>We don't exist independent of our ecological systems mong
We as a whole? No. A small (relative) group with genetic manipulation technology? They can do whatever they want. This isn't a conversation about whether or not the large population of humans currently here will be sustained, it's a question of whether or not the human species will persevere, and they very easily can.

>>8867536
journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fevo.2017.00003/full

>>8867595
>Humans can't survive a mass extinction event
Hippies pls leave

>>8867596
I highly doubt it
Sure, for a few generations, but there is no chance past that without large reserves of biodiversty and an incredible advancement in eco/earthsystem science and engineering after most of the population goes the survivors will slowly wither away and disappear after a couple hundered or so years. Keep in mind it usually takes complex life about 15-20 million years to take off again after disturbances of this scale

>>8867601
What do you study?

>>8867601
>muh hubris

>>8867064
Imagine going back in time and finding one of these monkey cats. You find it cute and pet it, then you scan it's dna and finds out it is your grand(...)mother.

>>8867610
global warning is a very slow phenomena and not in the least a threat to the long term biodiversity

end of the various ice ages didn't cause anything near a true mass extinction and those did have rapid global temperature shifts

>>8867615
A field that actually takes human technology into account, economics.

>>8867621
>muh mother Earth

>>8867763
Wtf are you talking about human activity is causing biodiversty loss on that scale reguardless of global warming.
90% of coral reefs are going to be gone by 2050 due to rising sea temputure and 40% are bleaching right now. That's just one thing, you have no idea what you are talking about.
>>8867813
>>8867828
Hello retards

>>8867908
>>8867763
And you need to take into account resilience and adaptive capacity the end of the ice ages didn't happen nearly as fast as this, or as hard ( :^) }and the biosphere wasn't already degraded to post-apocalyptic status like it is now.

>>8866998
Ain't it crazy they are more closely related to tetrapods than Ray-finned fish
And that the are going to go extinct due to human activity

>>8866998
FYI, it isn't actually the same species. None of the animals alive today are the same species from something that long ago. Even sharks, alligators, and crocodiles are all different. There are no living fossils.

>>8867921
And humans at that time didn't have modern technology which you continually refuse to acknowledge.

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>>8866998
If we start interstellar colonies, a better chance than any species, ever... Albeit we may be re-engineered to the point where you wouldn't recognize us anymore, and may have broken up into several more species.

Otherwise, next to nill. Too many things we could do to ourselves to wipe ourselves out (germ warfare, etc), and too many things that could wreck the biosphere too much without warning for a significant number of us to survive.

Still, slight chance, though come the billion year mark or so, we gotta be out of here one way or the other.

>>8868241
Kinda narrow definition of species - if you sent it back in time 400 million years, it might still be able to breed with the yocals. Morphologically, it's nearly identical, hence the term "living fossil".

>>8868267
>refuse to acknowledge
You mean dogmatically belive that it will fix all of our problems?
I consider modern technology and find it completely inadequate, like I said it's possible with tremendous advances in earth system science and engineering and agroecology with biodiversity reserves, but we are heading in the opposite direction. You have no idea how much synergy it takes to support complex life, especially a species like us

>>8866998
>wanting humanity to continue for four hundered-fucking-million years
No. Please, just no. Life is shit enough as it is. Please don't subject unborn lives through pain for that long.

>>8867490
>I am a retard and can't into basic math
That would still leave millions of people still alive retard.

>>8867503
>political forces
What politician would actively kill themselves?

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>>8868580

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>>8868578
>it would leave millions
My point being, not for long.....
The population wont be stable it will steady decline

>>8868784
Why? There would be enough food and shelter to feed those people for a long time.

>>8867147
>>8867503
>>8868580
Neglecting the fact that you need to get enough self-sustaining ones in the same area.

The whole Adam & Eve repopulating the Earth thing doesn't work. Ya need a fairly large threshold of population to prevent genetic collapse (24K-64K), all in one place and safe for a few generations.

Then there's various secondary threats to worry about after a mass extinction - such as what happens when all those nuclear power plants go unmanned for years.

And a lot of potential global extinction events simply don't leave anyone alive on the surface at all, for a good long while, or give you any warning, unlike nukes and climate change (GRB, X6+ SF, etc). Others give you plenty of warning, but there maybe nothing you can do about it (germ warfare, solar cycling, etc).

>>8868538
>You have no idea how much synergy it takes to support complex life, especially a species like us
Why would the most adaptive species on the planet need so much more biological synergy relative to other creatures?

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>>8869802
>realitive to other creatures
Lmao, ecological illiteracy is more dangerous than climate change the synergy is other creatures, which started to disappear when socioecological systems became socio-agricultural system, then really speed up when socio-ag became socio-economic, and finnally are being wiped out now that the economic-industrial systems we have now started to devour what is left.
You think we just exist but ourselves?
Marx was wrong about a lot of things but he hit the nail on the head with alienation, you probably think food comes from the market and that our agricultural technology is hyper efficient.(it is, at making profit from capital, terribly inefficient at supporting life(actually it makes life dissapear)
We do not exist without our higher order living systems and their intertwined earth systems that are breaking down into entropy. The people that you believe will survive have nothing without people like you to labour, and consume the before mentioned systems for them

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>>8869802

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>>8868800
No, I doubt it. With no ecological systems to produce food, food doesn't happen, there probably won't even be pollinating insects
Remember positive feedback loops
Less resources
More pressure to consume resources
And many more nasty FBL

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>>8868800
Not to mention water will be moving around and aridification will happen fast,
Crop diversity is extremely low right now, agroecology and biodiversty banks are the only way i see a future producing food.
>>8869802
And we are very far from the most adaptive species on the planet, our ability to change our ecosystems is what is killing us and we can't adapt with nothing to adapt

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>>8868926

>The whole Adam & Eve repopulating the Earth thing doesn't work. Ya need a fairly large threshold of population to prevent genetic collapse (24K-64K), all in one place and safe for a few generations.

The Toba catastrophe managed to reduce the entire human population of the world down to about 2,000 individuals, about 70,000 years ago:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2975862.stm

If such a thing were to happen today, at the very least 2,000 individuals could be grouped up in something like a government installation (like, say, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex--pic related) and live off of GMO food from hydroponics laboratories.

>>8870040
>ecological illiteracy is more dangerous than climate change
I'm guessing you're, what, 3rd year into your major? Just about on top of mount stupid where you're convinced you know everything about how the world works despite not acknowledging that your worldview is inherently myopic because it's framed from your point of reference as someone who knows more than the average person about ecology. Without looking at the future through a holistic lens, your predictive ability is almost nonexistent.

How come /pol/ never has any evidence that climate change is false? Why come to a science board if you aren't going to bring any science?

>>8870230
U goofed now I'm obliged to give a autobiography. It'll be bit autistic. On a lot of stimulants. It'll seem like narcissistic flexing/ self loathing, it is, but primarily an exercise of introspection/ informing(You)
>3rd year
Close, I'm self taught, Id be 3 years into my major if I had taken state education seriously. I began studying ecology rigorously ~16.
Ive compulsively studied nature my entire life, as a baby I demanded animal encyclopedias, then I continued to read encyclopedias/textbooks then started fucking with Internet and academic literature around 12. Ive always dicked about in ecosystems asborbed by biodiversity, I'm that boi who could give detailed info about many aspects of a forest, reef, landscape while my peers were studying shit information liks darwinian evo in class, a real freak. Concepts 3rd year ecology majors study like landscape connectivity, patch dynamics, adaptive capacity, adaptive renewal cycles, ecological networks, niche construction, general living systems, systems dynamics, self organization, synergetics, and more of the I understood intuitively before puberty, not the same kind of applicable understanding college students ought to be learning but i can conceptualize them at an expert level. I was a deep ecologist before I knew what ecology was, I can recall understanding patch dynamics and connectivity as a 5 year old. I learn from by direct experience and raw info. I am prone to deep thought and systems-networks thinking is innate to my "gift" for propositional logic>consequentialism and my early obsession with life.
Too bad I cant use this to do anything
Lacking tactile knowledge, prevents me from theoretical work. I stopped going to class at algebra 2(pls no bully). No credentials,resources or rigor bar me from serious empiricism. I do informed anecdotal observation + propositional logic. Fugk tldr as predicted.
I'll entertain your ad hominem attack next post, for the sake of novelty I suppose

>>8870167
>The Toba catastrophe managed to reduce the entire human population of the world down to about 2,000 individuals, about 70,000 years ago
Which we were lucky to make it through, is the source of nearly every inherited genetic disease we have, and has left us as one of the top three most genetically homogenous mammals on the planet. Even if we survive that again, and we're going to wind up like the Tasmanian Devils - so homogenous that our cancer is contagious.

True, if it is something you can see coming, and some forward thinking government either selectively gathers folks together ahead of time, or establishes infrastructure and a program to encourage it to happen, maybe that 1% of the remaining population will find enough of itself to hobble things back together.

Granted, that assumes it is one of those disasters you can see coming, where 1% of the population survives, and not one of the ones it keeps on killing after that point. (Not that, as mentioned, there aren't a whole lotta new threats that arise simply due to the sudden loss of population.)

>>8870630
lol

>>8867677
Sounds like a setup to a furry fantasy.

>>8870167
We had neanderthals, denisovans, and possibly several other hominids to interbreed with, we no longer have that luxury. We also are contending with climate change, the extent of which is not known, it could end up worse than the Permian event

>>8866998
Definitely, the reason most "scientists" or "ecologists" (like one of my retarded profs at university) believe that we shall go extinct in a million years or whatever arbitrary number is because they are self defeating weak sisters, who are too afraid of dreaming bigger and accepting that our role in the cosmos is forever set

Technology is rising at an exponential scale, and despite what George Orwell or Ray Bradbury may have convinced you of, the future is not bleak and technology won't cause some kind of hellish dystopia to manifest in place of our current society - in fact, thanks to advents in genetic engineering (now) and bionics (later) humans will be, on average, living longer and healthier lives with greater IQ and ability to shape the world. Yes, that's "all humans", as there won't be some kind of social stratification between improved ones and the regulars due to the implications of germline gen eng.This will be "homo superior", the superior man of our times.

Next, we will continue and improving at an exponential rate like we always have.

>b-but won't catastrophe wipe us out?

No. All the current "possible" doomsday scenarios are sci fi fantasy. Destruction of the human race from disease is impossible. Meteors are all but impossible and can be countered. Le global thermonuclear war also won't happen for the same reason it didn't and wouldn't have happened in the Cold War, i.e. the human collective will to live is too strong. Nothing can wipe us out, and we can't wipe out each other.

>b-but resources!

If resources become that much of a problem to our livelihoods then humanity will solve the problem, either independently in different countries or together.

Face it, humanity is going to keep going forward until the heat death of the universe. In 400,000 years time it's more likely for us to have artificially evolved into a race of cosmic godlike beings than anything else.

>>8867325
We'll look a fair bit different. For the next few centuries genetic engineering will pretty much keep us looking the same (but physically and mentally superior), after that, who knows?

>>8871876
I... am tempted to destroy this, but I just love your optimism so much, I can't bring myself to do it.

Largely because I believe that very optimism is part of what's going to be required to save us all.

>>8866998
Can I eat that 400 million year old fish?

>>8871966
>destroy this

Except it's impossible to destroy with empirical evidence as there exists none about the future, nor can such a unique situation be predicted to any real worth. Destroy my giant cock, faggot

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>>8867325
>>8867347
>>8871879

I was thinking that after 400,000,000 years, humans might look so radically different (due to millions of years of both genetic engineering and natural selection) that they might not even be recognizably human. Maybe something like the creatures depicted in Nemo Ramjet's All Tomorrows. Pic related.

>>8873003
Doubt it would be like that. We wouldn't so radically alter ourselves, and with no evolutionary pressure, there's no way we'd look like that. Maybe at some distant point when people are bored of looking like Armani supermodels there'll be counter-culture offshoots who modify themselves to look like insects or whatever as a statement, but it's doubtful that humans will look that different.

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>>8873189
Think about all the mutilation folks do to themselves now, just for social reasons.

Then think about the spreading to millions of planets, and all the genetic engineering that might be done just to survive in increasingly hostile environments and the biological immortality probably required.

Then combine the instinct for tribalism and how desperately cultural identity becomes based on appearance.

And finally, all the interbreeding between those various subspecies - which will probably eventually be nullified by being altered to such a degree they can no longer do so, and thus become actual species.

Granted, that assumes we get off the planet, as we certainly don't have 400 million years if we all stay here. Even if we don't, however, I suspect fashion based genetic engineering is going to create whole swaths of true freaks before we die off.

>>8866998
I just caught one of these in Animal Crossing the other day lol