Subject: Procoptodon
Author:
Posted on: 2013-05-13 01:33:00 UTC
Does anyone here have a hypothesis on why procoptodon goliah went extinct? After several hours of research, and analyzing aboriginal cave/rock drawings, I myself belive humans are resposible for the extinction a short faced kangaroos, however, they didn't kill all of them off, as some went extinct from other causes before humans came to Australia. This is also my introductory post.
Hi, I'm Pauline. Just ignore me sometimes, I tend to do awkward things (hehe, though now that I think about it, doesn't everyone.....)
May I present you with bleepolate ice cream, to help you deal with the craziness that is badfic?
Although I wish I could answer you, I have no clue, haha.
Anyway, welcome, your newbie nickname which will never be used is Red and you can have this little koala keyring because of Australia.
Greetings, new friend! Have a boomerang!
*throws a boomerang away*
So, a jackalope, then? Can you outlope an antelope? Can you jack the trades from a jack-of-all-trades? Would you elope with an antelope who was a jack-of-all-trades?
Also, duck.
...not sure, really. I'd blame humans for anything that happens to nature though.
And with that, welcome to the Board! Have some of my world-famous hydrophobic water to commemorate the event. May or may not be linked to a 50000 year old galactic extinction cycle.
Mind if I borrow som glopsnerch? The screaming of the water will give me a headache.
Have some lemming repellent, and welcome!
Dear Sir (I'm going to assume you're a sir, correct me if I'm wrong but I have a sixth sense for these things,)
Upon quick research into the matter of Procoptodon Goliah, (I wikipedia'd it, okay?) I submit that human activity, while probably part of the equation, may not have been the sole reason for the kangaroo's unfortunate demise. Geologic changes associated with the end of the Pleistocene epoch, such as the sudden lack of glacial and interglacial periods, are often stated to be a factor in the demise of other interesting species, such as the giant ground sloth, saber-toothed cat, and other such wonderful megafauna whose scientific names I can't be bothered to spell. Though short-faced kangaroos are hardly megafauna, I think that a relative decline in grasslands as large regions of Austrailia warmed and dried out decreased their available habitat, and that their demise culminated in their apperent status as a hopping barbecue for the locals.
I'm actually an Environmental Science Major, so I'm going to summarize this as "if climate change + humans, then extinction."
That is fascinating. Yes, you were correct in assuming I'm male.
Just another educated guess, given your username and your introductory post. :)
Asi, asi.
Have a map of Laurentia, a magnolia shrub, two mastodon teeth, a wooden spear, and half a bar of chocolate. :)
But that's a very interesting introductory post (although I could have sworn I'd seen your name before...) Hi! Welcome to the Board! Here, have some Swiss Bleepolate. It's very good for erasing details of horrific badfic (or brain-breakingly nonsensical hypotheses, to whit: maybe these kangaroos went extinct because the Doctor traveled back in time, only he was actually the Valeyard, and then the dinosaurs attacked him, but his companion at the time--a short-faced kangaroo--sacrificed herself so that he could live. And then the Doctor flew into another universe and became Darth Vader, who then decreed that short-faced kangaroos should all be eaten, and so they went extinct before they could really get started. But in a different universe, Rose Tyler refused to eat kangaroo, and started a rebellion against the Gelth, which wanted to take over the penguins. However, the penguins had been cross-bred with Daleks, and so the Gelth ended up destroyed, but Merlin felt sorry for the penguin-Daleks and adopted them and convinced King Arthur to raise one as his heir. And so it was that Camelot fell to Mordred the penguin-Dalek, and England was left in ruins. And then Mordred the penguin-Dalek's great-great-great-uncle married a short-faced kangaroo--the last one in existence--and the short-faced kangaroos were made extinct but survived in the short-faced kanga-pengui-leks. So there you go, that's my hypothesis. Did I give you enough Swiss Bleepolate? Here, have some more just in case.)
...I claim no responsibility for any brain-damage caused by the above hypothesis.
~DF
Forget the Bleepolate, I need some Bleeprin injected straight into by brain cavity. Perhaps that can be called "Bleeprin maximum!" Don't mix it with the stuffs, or eat pickles after use.
Ooog... I need more bleepolate.
Because I'm not certain I can speak English after reading that, at least without malfunctioning and ending all my sentences with the wrong cranberry.
(Why yes, I just watched Iron Man 3. Your point?)
And of course I'm insured; I paid good Swiss Bleepolate for that insurance! How dare you suggest that it doesn't exist?
Hm, my apologies. Although you seem to be doing well so far.
Cranberries...*munches*
Congrats, though, now I really, really, *really* want to see IM3.
*ends with a cranberry*
~DawnBerry
Okay, no spoilers here. I wrote the massive post above before reading your post the first time, so that's not evidence that no damage was done.
(Actually, that theory made me feel kind of good. Like someone had taken a baseball bat to the massive lump of research-related discomfort that is thesis and hit it out of the ballpark. Not that I'm not making you do the paperwork, though. :) )
It really is pretty awesome. Jarvis rocks. Pepper rocks. Everybody rocks. To say more would be spoilers. :)
Let me take a crack at it.
The initial breed of short-faced kangaroos had been bred from the standard-issue marsupials, like wallabies, for example, by a group of hyper-advanced entities in an attempt to purify the kangaroos' genetic base. The Earth marsupial gene-manipulation was a crucial portion of a test to see if the methods used there were viable before tests on sapient beings.
Once the method had been perfected, the kangaroos were left on Earth and the entities launched off a galaxy-wide genetic manipulation program, working outside the lines to allow bloodlines with preferable genes to crossbreed in an attempt to create a group of individuals specially born with enhanced abilities, including high-level psionic powers.
However, they were just too good. Some of the psionic science-children were much more powerful than expected, and many of those had so little control over their abilities that they often ended up warping time itself. A certain unscrupulous member of the hyper-advanced entities began using them as weapons, brainwashing them to serve him and using them to erase his enemies from history. However, due to that warlord's lack of thought to temporal consequences, the past of the massive genetic program that created the children was being disrupted, making the timeline unstable, which led to the warlord being discovered. Other members of the hyper-advanced entities managed to capture one of the warlord's time-warping mutants, which had their abilities enhanced even further by its master's experimentation, and, seeing no better choice, imbued the growing fetus of one of their own race with the psionic child's power. The power could not be implanted into an adult, since the sudden introduction of that level of psychic power could potentially destroy the mind of the recipient, and the entities weren't willing to have an insane time-warping entity running around the place.
The imbued child, however, resented his role as the chosen one, and after one of his mentors was removed from history by one of the warlord's attacks, which caused everyone but the time-separated child to forget about him, the imbued child stole a ship and transported himself to Earth, intending to manipulate the past of the breeding program and stop the time-manipulating abilities from ever appearing.
However, in his unstable emotional state, he botched it, and ended up skewing the past results of the program too far, causing it to fail rather than grow in a different direction. His powers spiraled out of control as causality attempted to catch up with the new history, which intersected with the previous time-instability caused by the warlord to set off a temporal chain reaction that ended up destroying large pieces of the timeline.
At the end, almost the entire program was removed from history, and only the first forms of the short-faced kangaroos, early test subjects created to make sure the genetic isolation equipment was working as intended, remained on the planet. Eventually, since the developments that stabilized their genetic structure were removed from history, the short-faced kangaroos began to fall prey to chromosomal diseases, and eventually began to die off. A small group was able to cling to life through beneficial mutations, but the interference of humans led to the extinction of that group as well later on.
Did you really read this far down, or are you just looking to see how long this gets? Don't worry, I'm done. Here you go, anybody that finished reading all that, have a cookie for putting up with me!
You know, around halfway through I started wondering if you were about to create the Time Lords. Although now I'm picturing the Doctor eyeing this quizzically and deciding not to touch it.
Actually, here, have a Gallifrey scene:
Time Lord #1*: Take a look at this.
Time Lord #2**: Ah, marsupials. I've been following that timeline for a while now.
Time Lord #1: Yes, but it's been branching out recently.
Time Lord #2: Ah, yes, so it has. Oh no, they're warping time! Should we--?
Time Lord #1: No need. See there, that child's going to fix it.
Time Lord #2: Oh, I say...
Time Lord #3***: Well, that's it, then. It's taking care of itself. Problem solved.
Time Lord #1: Indeed. Later, gentlemen.
Time Lord #3: *mumbles* I was a lady in my last regeneration...
*they leave*
Time Lord #2: ...we could have prevented this.
(Time Lord #2 eventually became the Doctor. Are you surprised?)
~DF
--
*Not the first Time Lord ever, just the first one to speak in this scene.
**Same notation; replace 'first' with 'second'.
***Same notation; replace--okay, you get it.
Besides, if they were able to manipulate time with their thoughts, they wouldn't need time machines. TARDISes would be a fad, nothing more, and the Doctor wouldn't have his blue box. They wouldn't really be Time Lords at all, then. They might call themselves that, but it wouldn't be the same.
You'd think that a group of Time Lords would be more concerned that big chunks of time were being ripped up and rearranged by a massive cosmic temper tantrum, but then again, the Classic Who Gallifreyans never seemed that concerned with most events, so it's probably just some early-era Time Lords looking for something interesting out in the worlds.
Unless they're espousing the "ours is the only reality of consequence" philosophy and just watching noncommittally as the other timestream rips itself to shreds. For shame, hypothetical Time Lords. For shame. All that power, and you wouldn't do anything with it.
...somewhere around the appearance of the penguins. But theory is quite crazy.
Anyway, for the newbie newer than me - welcome! Have this pouch. You can't fit anything into it, but it's an interesting accessory.
And so...
1. Have you read the constitution?
2. Have you read The Original Series?
Uh... what was the third one... Oh, yeah!
3. What are your favorite fandoms?
In response to what you've asked. 1 Yes. 2 Yes. My fandoms are Discworld, Redwall, Warriors, wereworld, Man after man, and Walking with Monsters. Also, can an agent belong to an extinct species, like say, a thylacine?
Provided that someone, somewhere, has written about thylacines. A lot of people have characters from failed original stories that migrate over, and nobody objected when I wanted to bring in a Dinotopia Velociraptor, though my permissions piece is on a permanent backburner. :)
The penguins went in because I needed something *really* random. It's kind of hard to make something nonsensical, you know? I have this tendency to actually try and keep things in the same universe, so I had to subvert that. Quite interesting, really.
Also, you've forgotten several more questions that are traditionally asked at this time:
4. Do you plan on writing missions? If so, do you have a department in mind?
5. What is [redacted]
Okay, so question #5 would normally be something seemingly unrelated, such as 'do you like cheese', or 'what do you think of the color orange'. However, I think this time Jackalope has beaten us to it with the call for hypotheses, so instead, have this question:
6. Are you male, female, both, undecided, or some other variation thereupon? I just realized I was lacking a pronoun...
~DF
I do indeed have a department in mind, that being the department of Mary Sues. Also, I have an intention to write missions. On a unrelated topic, does anyone know the flavor of the sound of aquamarine? In my opinion, it tastes like a temporal flux.
Hi! I'm a little late, but welcome, welcome, welcome! Here, have a Bottomless Three-feet-deep Bag of Chocolate for use during emergencies or general panic. It can never decide how deep it is.
And a temporal flux sounds just as plausible as anything else, in my opinion. But when you've just finished a Discworld novel, anything's plausible.
-Aila
I cannot say I have a hypothesis, as I did not know what "short faced kangaroos" were until you made this post and I googled the scientific name. They do seem like fascinating creatures, though, so might you tell me a bit more about them?
Also hello. Cookie?