Prehistoric, Dinosaur-Era Shark With Insane Teeth Found Swimming Off Coast of Portugal

a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

In all fairness, it was caught accidentally and the research that they were doing when they caught it, ironically was about not catching fish like this and preserving them properly because they are very rare and likely critically endangered. They've only documented live specimens in their natural habitat once and that was in 2004.

a reply to: intrptr

My point is that mutations don't necessarily create "higher" lifeforms. Mutations create a bunch of new possible traits, including helpful, harmful, and seemingly neutral traits. The things that evolved from bacteria won't necessarily flourish in the original bacteria's environment.

Look at humans, for example. Pound for pound, we're far weaker and slower than most other primates. We can't climb as well, have weaker teeth/jaws, can't jump as well, have flimsier bones, have no protective fur layer (well, most of us lol), etc. So is our evolution superior to a different evolved branch of primates like chimpanzees or gorillas? The answer completely depends on the environment.

Take a random naked human and a random gorilla and place them in a gorilla's natural habitat. Which one will have the better chance of surviving? The gorilla. Now reverse that scenario by putting them both in a human's natural habitat (human towns, etc) and the human will now be the clear winner. Both species would be able to survive for a while in the other's natural habitat, but both would clearly be at a disadvantage. And without searching for more hospitable conditions, both would likely die off.

That's how it works. If an animal is born with much thicker skin and a thicker layer of fat under the skin than its parents (aka a mutation), is it superior to them or inferior? That completely depends on the environment. If they live in a very hot place, the one with the thicker skin may now be at a disadvantage because of the threat of overheating. So it would either suffer or try to find cooler weather to feel more comfortable (or stay in the water more, drink more to counteract the additional sweating, etc). But if they were in a colder environment, that thicker skinned one would likely be at an advantage. Then again, the thicker skinned one may fair better in combat than its parents, so it may still be desirable enough to its peers in the hot environment to reproduce there, even if it still had other disadvantages there.

Another example would be cute little bunny rabbits. Suppose a rabbit was born with a defective/improved growth rate. So it grows to 6 feet in length, weighs a whopping 300 lbs, has long sharp claws, and is muscular as a bull. Is it superior to other rabbits or inferior? If it could still mate with other rabbits, it would start passing down its genes and that could eventually lead to the birth of a new species.

In this case, its new size would stave off its natural predators, so that seems to be a bonus. But at that size, it would also require far more food, which would be harmful for it since a rabbit's normal environment may not provide enough food for it. And even worse, 6 foot muscular rabbits w/sharp claws would gain a new enemy (humans) who would likely kill them off since they'd be a clear threat (or food supply). If it stayed at its normal size, it would've likely continued to survive.

If a mutation leads to a species going extinct, then it's not an upgrade.

Although a gorilla is more muscular than a human. Pound for pound of muscle humans are just as strong. The reason we are weaker has to do with the nerve groups that activate the muscle fibers.

Humans have small motor groups of nerves great apes have large motor groups of nerves.

This means that when gorilla thinks 'flex arm' the nerve group that controls the muscle fibers in said arm fire say 25 percent of the total muscle fibers. When humans think "flex arm" our nerve bundles fire 2 to 5 percent of the total muscle fibers.

Of course a gorilla like anything else can have some degree of control over how many fibers are fired off at once there is a threshold it cant go below leaving the big guy stuck with mostly gross motor movements and no fine motor movement.

Humans are the inverse of that we have a imposed biologically cut off point on how many fibers we can general fire off. Say never going over 50% of the total fibers. So we dont have the 'super strength' of a gorilla because of that. Evolution has made our nervouse system tuned for fine motor control.

However during times of extreme duress the human brain can over ride that threshold and fire maybe up to 75% of the fibers at once which is why you see stories of mothers performing superhuman bouts of strength to lift the back of a car up to rescue their trapped children.

Humans started evolving their intelligence allowing us to want to do more fine motor movements with things like our hands to build manipulate things intelligently. So thats why we shifted to small motor groups instead of the standard large motor groups like the rest of the apes.

Its also why apes cant talk. They have the same vocal chords we do they dont have the fine motor groups to articulate them finely enough to make words.

A 300lb pound weightlifter with large motor control groups would be every bit as strong as a gorilla in theory. The muscles are there just not a way to activate them all at once.

originally posted by: trollz
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