What is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

[Queequeg]

I wonder if the change towards a grass-dominated ecosphere radically changed the needs of larger creatures?  Sauropods, in part due to lack of differentiated teeth but also because those conifer trees are a fucking bitch, needed extremely complex stomachs.  You needed to be pretty big just to be able to digest that shit, while most of the ungulates don't have to get that big to eat grasses.  Things become about maximizing survival-rate for medium sized herbivores and carnivores, rather than the Mesozoic race for brawn and armor.  This would not account for the simultaneous development of intelligence among cetaceans, but I think it's pretty likely that there were creatures as clever as the extremely clever New Caledonian Crow in the Mesozoic.

[Queequeg]

Also I still think the argument is pretty specious on the face of it.  If a Utahraptor population was introduced to the Savannah they would go completely, totally nuts unless dedicated egg-thieves start attacking clutches instantly. 

[Razgovory]

Well, Pterosaur brains aren't exactly available for study, but since they are considered reptiles I imagine they weren't that bright.

[Queequeg]

Birds are reptiles.

[jimmy olsen]

Timmy I don't know if it's reasonable to think like that.  Pterosaurs had massively complex flocculi and theoretically hyper-sensitive wing membranes, birds still won.

Birds didn't seem to have much to do with that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur#Extinction

Which species exists today, and which had the more complex brain?  Which, if the bigger brain always wins out, should be bumping in to windows today?

I've willing to bet that modern birds have more complex brains than them.

[jimmy olsen]

Also I still think the argument is pretty specious on the face of it.  If a Utahraptor population was introduced to the Savannah they would go completely, totally nuts unless dedicated egg-thieves start attacking clutches instantly.

Their immune system is 100 million years out of date. Reptile/Birds diseases would devastate them.

As for why Surapods got so big, it all has to do with the advanced avian lungs dinosaurs had.

[Viking]

Timmy I don't know if it's reasonable to think like that.  Pterosaurs had massively complex flocculi and theoretically hyper-sensitive wing membranes, birds still won.

Extenuating circumstances.

[Razgovory]

Birds are reptiles.

No they aren't!

[Darth Wagtaros]

Birds are reptiles.

Also considered dinosaurs.

[frunk]

Birds are reptiles.

Birds are as much reptiles as we are, in that we share a common ancestor that we would consider a reptile.  The reptilian classification is a bit of a mess.

[Siege]

Well, Pterosaur brains aren't exactly available for study, but since they are considered reptiles I imagine they weren't that bright.

[Queequeg]

Birds are reptiles.

Birds are as much reptiles as we are, in that we share a common ancestor that we would consider a reptile.  The reptilian classification is a bit of a mess.

That's more or less the point I was making. Pterosaurs are super closely related to dinosaurs, thus saying at some point a species of Dinosaur stops being a reptile raises question of if Pterosaurs were recognizably reptile in the sense Raz meant.

[Razgovory]

Birds are reptiles.

Birds are as much reptiles as we are, in that we share a common ancestor that we would consider a reptile.  The reptilian classification is a bit of a mess.

That's more or less the point I was making. Pterosaurs are super closely related to dinosaurs, thus saying at some point a species of Dinosaur stops being a reptile raises question of if Pterosaurs were recognizably reptile in the sense Raz meant.

What are you talking about?  Pterosaurs aren't "super closely related" to do dinosaurs.  They are more closely related then say, Squid or cabbage, but they still aren't dinosaurs or birds.  Yes they evolved from something reptile like, but so did mammals.  Go back far enough and Dinosaurs and humans and reptiles  all share a common ancestor who was a fish, however mammals are not fish.

[Queequeg]

Same clade. Same sub-clade. Same sub-clade of a sub-clade. If we were able to back to the Triassic no layman would be able to distinguish between the longlegged, fast, semi bipedal reptiles that became pterosaurs and those that became dinosaurs.

[Grinning_Colossus]

Yep, the pterosaur line split off right before the most recent common ancestor of dinosaurs. That's why people who object to calling them 'flying dinosaurs' come off as so goddamn pedantic.