How could human beings move out of Africa with so many large, fierce animals?

Randwolf said:
The OP is talking about that time when humans were only about four inches tall - nothing to do with dino's and such.
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34494.The_Wee_Free_Men

"It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it's done" (Pratchett, or close enough)

My nomination for the inscription on the Great Seal Of The Scientific Endeavor. (It's Still Magic When You Know How It's Done, etc - pick one)

This is a better book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34501.A_Hat_Full_of_Sky

but the inscription is perhaps too general - for everyone pretending to be human:

"Shudupshudupshudupshudup" (Pratchett).
 
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On a more serious note, I doubt that early humans migrated through inland routes of Africa but along both the East coast and the West coast.
Some of the earliest toolmakers existed at the southernmost tip of South Africa. They were coastal dwellers and existed for a large part on fishing and clams which were abundant at that time. This may have resulted in a greater advance in sophisticated tool use and also in intelligence.

Of course this was long after the age of dinosaurs.
Discovery places complex cognition at 72,000 years ago, and perhaps far earlier

Evidence that early modern humans living on the coast of the far southern tip of Africa 72,000 years ago employed pyrotechnology – the controlled use of fire – to increase the quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacturing process, is being reported in the Aug. 14 issue of the journal Science. An international team of researchers, including three from the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, deduce that "this technology required a novel association between fire, its heat, and a structural change in stone with consequent flaking benefits." Further, their findings ignite the notion of complex cognition in these early engineers.
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https://asunow.asu.edu/content/early-modern-humans-use-fire-engineer-tools

and
Pinnacle Point a small promontory immediately south of Mossel Bay, a town on the southern coast of South Africa. Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point have revealed occupation by Middle Stone Age people between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago. The focus of excavations has been at Cave 13B (PP13B), where the earliest[vague] evidence for the systematic exploitation of marine resources (shellfish) and symbolic behaviour has been documented,[1]and at Pinnacle Point Cave 5–6 (PP5–6), where the oldest[vague]evidence for the heat treatment of rock to make stone tools has been documented.[2] The only human remains have been recovered from younger deposits at PP13B which are c. 100,000 years old
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point

It would seem entirely reasonable that coastal migration north along the east and west coasts of Africa may have started by these already advanced humans. Abundant seafood and relative safety from large predators would be a much preferred route than over the much hotter inland routes which also would be much more hazardous.

At that time, this might have resulted in two separate "bottleneck" land connections. Along the west coast through Spain and along the east coast through the Middle East land connection.

This separation may have resulted in separate evolutionary processes and account for some of the diversity in the human race.
 
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How can humans (today) go for a walk with all these large automobiles around? Surely they will all be run over soon.
 
My response to this thread can best be summed up as:

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Yet another general science and technology thread. :) No need to move it I guess. If all such threads were moved, there would be no threads left in the science sections. :)
 
I would suspect that, over the intervening timespan, that "wall" became more vertical than it was when Dino's walked upon it.
 
Kittamaru said:
I would suspect that, over the intervening timespan, that "wall" became more vertical than it was when Dino's walked upon it.
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It seems to be a limestone slab from the Maastrichtian period, right at the end of the Cretaceous, so about 65-70m yrs ago. The period is named after chalk outcrops found near Maastricht in the Netherlands. So these tracks were made at the very end of the dinosaur epoch.
 
exchemist said:
It seems to be a limestone slab from the Maastrichtian period, right at the end of the Cretaceous, so about 65-70m yrs ago. The period is named after chalk outcrops found near Maastricht in the Netherlands. So these tracks were made at the very end of the dinosaur epoch.
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Neat! Out of curiosity - would a limestone slab of such a size be able to handle the tectonic forces required to shunt it from mostly horizontal to mostly vertical without simply shattering? Curious to know if my idea holds water (well, obviously not because it's limestone - water would erode it :tongue:)
 
Kittamaru said:
Neat! Out of curiosity - would a limestone slab of such a size be able to handle the tectonic forces required to shunt it from mostly horizontal to mostly vertical without simply shattering? Curious to know if my idea holds water (well, obviously not because it's limestone - water would erode it :tongue:)
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The dynamics of the move and the constitution of the slab allowed it to happen. Probably a slow up-thrust rather than Fantasia-type upheaval.
 
The mountains in Glacier park Montana are the result of an over thrust. That means that the youngest rock layers are at the bottom of the mountains and the oldest are on the top.o_O

See Lewis Overthrust if you are interested.
 
Kittamaru said:
Neat! Out of curiosity - would a limestone slab of such a size be able to handle the tectonic forces required to shunt it from mostly horizontal to mostly vertical without simply shattering? Curious to know if my idea holds water (well, obviously not because it's limestone - water would erode it :tongue:)
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I would assume it was covered by mudstone or something when it was laid down and that when the uplift took place it would have been part of a large block of strata. The mudstone would have been subsequently eroded away, leaving the limestone exposed. So yes, no reason why it could not have become tilted as part of a general folding process, as it would have been protected by being embedded in something larger.
 
Kittamaru said:
Neat! Out of curiosity - would a limestone slab of such a size be able to handle the tectonic forces required to shunt it from mostly horizontal to mostly vertical without simply shattering? Curious to know if my idea holds water (well, obviously not because it's limestone - water would erode it :tongue:)
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It probably is shattered, but at such a large scale it still leaves large areas unbroken.
 
origin said:
The mountains in Glacier park Montana are the result of an over thrust. That means that the youngest rock layers are at the bottom of the mountains and the oldest are on the top.o_O

See Lewis Overthrust if you are interested.
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Holy nuts... the kinds of forces involved in these kinds of things rather boggle the mind.
 
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