you get to resurrect one extinct species. Which one is it?
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Gastric brooding frogs. Because they swallowed their own eggs and then, 6-8 weeks later, projectile vomited baby frogs. What could be cooler than that?
The thylacine. They’d still have plenty of habitat, the other animal in their ecological niche (the Tasmanian Devil) is very much endangered in the wild thanks to contagious facial tumours, and they were awesome.
Edited by Ampersand to add:
The Anklosaurus.
It was, after all, the best dinosaur.
the wooly mammoth, because i want to eat one.
Neanderthals…I think us and them should make another go at hanging out together.
Tiktaalik, of course.
So that creationists can see clearly that it was neither a true fish, nor a crocodile.
So hard to decide…should I go with dodos because it was so clearly humanity’s fault that they went extinct or some sort of dinosaur to see what they really looked like?
The Carolina parakeet.
Giant beavers from the Ice Age of North America!
Because, well, duh. Giant beavers.
Torn between Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon, both because they’re North American. Maybe ivory-billed woodpecker.
Tyrannosaurus rex, duh.
Though homo neanderthalensis would be a close second choice.
Carolina parakeet. ‘cuz when one of them got shot by farmers, all the others would gather around . . . in sympathy? to try to help? dunno, they must have been very social and curious birds, although easy targets =(
And how cool would it be to have flocks of native parrots flying around the US?
The original ancestor of course! The first living, replicating “cell” or molecular replicator. It would almost certainly resemble some sort of virus or extremely primitive bacteria, and it would be fascinating to see the first type of “life” that had ever existed on this planet.
Yep, you win.
I’m changing my answer.
—Myca
Although, of course, we sort of *are* neanderthals.
Although, of course, we sort of *are* neanderthals.
Well, some of us are. IIRC, Neanderthal genes can be found in people whose ancestors left Africa early on after the evolution of H sapiens but not in those who stayed longer. I’m not quite sure what, if anything at all, that says about us as a species and various sub-species, but it’s somehow vaguely disturbing to me. Probably due to the concern that people will say, “Ah hah! That proves that Europeans are superior.”
Well, we’re neanderthal hybrids and we (most of us) contain neanderthal DNA. So we’re neanderthals in the same sense that my mutt dog is a Saint Bernard.
Except that it gets weirder, because neanderthals were an actual different species, and are not a direct evolutionary predecessor of modern humanity, so we’re neanderthals in the same sense that my mutt dog is an arctic fox, maybe.
If he contained arctic fox DNA, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t.
Also I don’t own a dog.
So maybe we’re neanderthals in the same sense that mules are horses. Except, of course, that mules are a complete new species that’s sterile, whereas (apparently) crossbreeding Homo Sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis did not result in a new species or sterility.
So yeah. Maybe we’re neanderthals kinda.
This has been a Poorly-Understood Paleontology minute with your host, Myca.
—Myca
I’ve heard comparative biologists argue that inability to interbreed is a late event in speciation. So Neanderthal/Cro Magnon fertile interbreeding maybe isn’t all that unexpected. If I understand correctly, which is by no means certain.
I’d bring back the dodo bird, of course. Because “Porky in Wackyland” is a really funny cartoon.
Mike says: We’re neanderthals in the same way that a liger is a lion.
Me: Sort of, except a liger is equal parts lion and tiger.
Mike: So, depending on who ligers fuck, after they’ve done that for a while, whatever it is they end up with afterward… it’s speciation. It happens. We don’t have words for it because it usually takes too long. That’s why we had to start doing actual taxonomy cladistically because it incoroporates evolution where Linnean clasifications do not.
Me: Cheater.
I’ll go with Silphium, because it sounds like it was a pretty useful plant.
Aw, goddammit. I should have said Moderate Republicans.
—Myca
Snort.
The American lion. One of the biggest cats ever.
Liberal Rep . . . oh, Myca got there first.
Happy people.
I had the same idea…