# Advanced dinosaur civilization **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2022, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923 "2022-06-09T16:22:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/61 "2022-06-09T22:10:20Z")
> [@filmstar-en](#): > > I think you then have to try to think what would constitute an advanced civilisation and what durable artifacts they might leave behind as evidence that they did, in fact exist. Where are the flint tools from before they became so advanced? > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Nobody’s found so much as a sharpened stone around a dinosaur fossil. Right, and the “young earth” people have tried. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/62 "2022-06-09T22:11:11Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m pointing out that you are going beyond science to ask what science would say. That’s not legitimate inquiry. > > You’ve been given dozens of reasons why everything science says is antithetical to the notion of a past civilization. Postulating events where science can say nothing is not science. I think you’ve completely misunderstood what this thread is about. If you don’t want to address this topic, please start your own thread. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/63 "2022-06-09T22:33:03Z")
The short answer then is that the degree of civilization and the extent (how far across the globe) - the lack of any evidence whatsoever suggests the odds are extremely long, almost zero. Whether it’s the current global spread - 10 billion people - or even something small localized like Easter Island; it seems we expanded to consume all available resources and fill the environment to capacity before reducing to sustainable levels. The expansion particularly takes advantage of tool use (plus fire, agriculture, etc.) to exceed the natural carrying capacity of normal environment. The lack of evidence suggests this never happened for any species of dinosaur. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/64 "2022-06-09T22:45:37Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > The expansion particularly takes advantage of tool use (plus fire, agriculture, etc.) to exceed the natural carrying capacity of normal environment. I don’t believe the OP proposes dinosaurs reaching human levels of technology or society. The question is what kind of dinosaur civilization might have existed within the evidence available. Communal nesting, if it existed, would be a good start. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/65 "2022-06-09T22:57:10Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Communal nesting, if it existed, would be a good start. It did: [Dinosaur Eggs in Patagonia Nesting Ground Suggest They Lived in Herds](https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaur-eggs-patagonia-nesting-ground-herds-2021-10#:~:text=Paleontologists%20found%20100%20eggs%20and,earliest%20evidence%20of%20dinosaur%20herds). [Research](https://nlcontent.springernature.com/d-redirect/TIDP1036978X9F4C0E23A8674A4DA9D9B4C651E541BFYI4/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.nature.com%2farticles%2fs41598-021-99176-1&linksource=https%3a%2f%2fnemo-mail-monkey-live.springernature.app%2f15589138%2fpressReleases%2f%5bdossier-id%5d%3feditorialDomain%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fpress.springernature.com%26publicationDomain%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fdx.doi.org) _published Thursday describes a collection of eggs and juvenile and adult skeletons from a dinosaur called Mussaurus patagonicus, which were found in Patagonia, Argentina. The dino is an ancestor of long-necked herbivores called sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus._ _Most of the chicken-sized eggs were discovered in clusters of eight to 30, suggesting they resided in nests as part of a common breeding ground. Scientists also found Mussaurus skeletons of similar sizes and ages buried together. Combined, these patterns offer evidence that the dinosaurs lived in herds._ [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02174-7](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02174-7) Sure, that indicates the start of tribal or even village life. But I think “civilization” means cities, or similar. None of the other human species had, IMHO “civilization”. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/66 "2022-06-09T23:11:13Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I think you’ve completely misunderstood what this thread is about. If you don’t want to address this topic, please start your own thread. The question of the OP seems to be “what sort of dinosaur civilization can be ruled out”. The answer to your OP is that unequivocally, without a doubt, we can categorically rule out every conceivable form of dinosaur civilization. It simply didn’t happen. There’s no room for speculation in the non-fictional realm. The end. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/67 "2022-06-09T23:11:16Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Communal nesting, if it existed, would be a good start. Communal nesting exists in many species - rodents and birds, for some - and is never considered signs of intelligence or civilization. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/68 "2022-06-09T23:55:46Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You’ve been given dozens of reasons why everything science says is antithetical to the notion of a past civilization. Postulating events where science can say nothing is not science. One of the dozens of reasons stated is: > [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s difficult to credit any sort of civilization, considering what we know about the cranial capacity of Saurischians and Ornithschians. That pretty much kills the whole thing, nipped in the bud. There certainly hasn’t been any evidence for pre-human civilization at any level, either. It’s interesting that birds have [primate-like numbers of neurons](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1517131113) in the forebrain. > [@eburacum45](#): > > For a civilisation roughly comparable to ours, there should be several things remaining. Mines and holes in the ground in general would fill up with sediment, and even if they collapse, many of the details would remain in situ. I kinda thought the point of this thread is to expand our definition of civilization. If we just look for evidence of a civilization roughly comparable to ours, we might miss clues about other technologies, like biological machines (trees, flowering plants, fungi, etc.). We only have a sample of one for our understanding of technology and civilization. > [@Pleonast](#): > > I’ve been thinking in terms of intensive resource exploitation, which is probably showing my human bias I think there might be other technologies that exploit resources that might not show up in the fossil record if you aren’t looking for it. For example, if a civilization exploited geo-thermal energy or biological technology, not much evidence of that civilization would survive 65 million years, or less. I think humans should keep an open mind if we’re ever going to understand an alien civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/69 "2022-06-10T00:25:20Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The answer to your OP is that unequivocally, without a doubt, we can categorically rule out every conceivable form of dinosaur civilization. So we _do_ have sufficiently complete paleontological evidence to rule out a sapient dinosaur species evolving anywhere across the entire Mesozoic? Can you point to further reading? Maybe something like therapod fossil locations and datings. How have we ruled out Antarctic therapods? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/70 "2022-06-10T00:33:00Z")
> [@EastUmpqua](#): > > I think there might be other technologies that exploit resources that might not show up in the fossil record if you aren’t looking for it. For example, if a civilization exploited geo-thermal energy or biological technology, not much evidence of that civilization would survive 65 million years, or less. I think humans should keep an open mind if we’re ever going to understand an alien civilization. Yes, we definitely need to avoid human-centric biases. Biological technologies (like domesticated plants and animals) would leave a fossil record, unless they went extinct as quickly as the sapient species. They might be also be detectable by other extinctions (for example, wild ecosystems being displaced by domesticated ones). I’m not sure how geothermal energy can be exploited without more intensive technologies, like large ironworks. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/71 "2022-06-10T00:41:19Z")
They’re could be wind power without metals. Geothermal can be used for some applications with ceramics. Waterpower of course is viable. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/72 "2022-06-10T00:45:59Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Biological technologies (like domesticated plants and animals) would leave a fossil record, unless they went extinct as quickly as the sapient species. That would depend on how you interpreted the fossil record. Especially if you assume humans were the first species to domesticate plants: [Flowering plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant) diversified extensively during the [Early Cretaceous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cretaceous), became widespread by 120 million years ago, and replaced [conifers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conifers) as the dominant trees from 60 to 100 million years ago. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/73 "2022-06-10T01:08:27Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > So we _do_ have sufficiently complete paleontological evidence to rule out a sapient dinosaur species evolving anywhere across the entire Mesozoic? You asked about a civilization. The absence of thumbs or tools pretty much rules out anything like a civilization. If you want to move the goalposts to “sapience”, then you are of course free to imagine anything you like. Perhaps they were advanced thinkers in some way that left no trace whatsoever of culture or socialization, and did not require any usage of tools. Perhaps they drove cars that we can never find because they were made of ice and couldn’t survive the ice age. Anything is possible if your criteria are untestable. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/74 "2022-06-10T01:16:56Z")
You can have a non-technological civilization. One with traditions, history and education. If learning is passed along from generation to generation and it grows on the way that is a civilization also. Such a civilization could learn to breed animals and plants. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/75 "2022-06-10T01:17:35Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The absence of thumbs or tools pretty much rules out anything like a civilization. The absence of thumbs and tools _where_? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/76 "2022-06-10T01:26:04Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The absence of thumbs and tools _where_ ? in… every dinosaur fossil site ever discovered? I feel like we’re veering into Flying Spaghetti Monster territory here. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/77 "2022-06-10T01:30:34Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > You can have a non-technological civilization. One with traditions, history and education. Perhaps _culture_ but not anything we’d call civilization. As I said, if your hypothesis is untestable, then you can imagine literally anything you like, but there’s not much informative or explanatory power in that. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/78 "2022-06-10T01:42:10Z")
Not my hypothesis, I know the chance of a dino civilization is close to zero. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/79 "2022-06-10T02:30:40Z")
I don’t think the lack of plastics in the fossil record proves anything. But the lack of plastic-eating bacteria until quite recently is highly suggestive. > **[Ideonella sakaiensis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > > Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium from the genus Ideonella and family Comamonadaceae capable of breaking down and consuming the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) using it as both a carbon and energy source. The bacterium was originally isolated from a sediment sample taken outside of a plastic bottle recycling facility in Sakai City, Japan. > Ideonella sakaiensis was first identified in 2016 by a team of researchers led by Kohei Oda of ... Plastic is carbon, and carbon is food. In the short time that we’ve used plastics, a wild bacterium had already evolved to eat it. So I think if a previous civilization has developed plastic, we would have more remnants of plastic-eaters around. Also, if that prior civilization dug mines, or cut up their food with blades, i believe we’d have found evidence. So I’m pretty sure there was no prior technologically advanced (as in, using stone blades) civilisation. Could there have been dinosaurs with elaborate social structures and songs and history and legends that didn’t leave a trace? I guess so. They’d have had to have smaller neurons than modern animals, but that’s probably possible. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/80 "2022-06-10T02:41:48Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > in… every dinosaur fossil site ever discovered? Only about 11,000 dinosaur fossils [have ever been discovered](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dinosaur-discoveries-are-booming/#:~:text=In%20the%20two%20centuries%20since,in%20North%20America%20and%20Europe.). That covers something like 165 million years, so the smallest maximum gap is around 15,000 years, and in practice probably much larger. And of course that’s across all dinosaurs; if you include only ones that could plausibly be intelligent, the record is even sparser. We don’t know how long civilizations last on average, but the way things are going, it seems likely to be short–mere thousands of years. You still need some kind of evolutionary run-up of intelligence, but that could possibly take place in under a million years. It may very well be that there is zero extant fossil evidence of a large-brained creature with some type of tool-compatible appendages. The first step in forming a testable hypothesis is figuring out what to test. That early tests of the speed of light showed it to be effectively instantaneous did not demonstrate that a finite speed of light was impossible, but they _did_ put bounds on the minimum speed. Further tests took this into account. Likewise, we can put some bounds on the possibility of prior civilizations existing, whether dino or otherwise. It probably could not have lasted very long, and probably never reached a level of technology equal to modern day. Such a civilization might have been so brief and low-impact that it really never will be found. But there are plenty of fossils left to be found, and the ones we have found are subject to bias. Maybe we haven’t found anything yet because we’ve only been looking in the spots where fossils easily form. Or maybe we need better means of study that don’t involve fossils at all. In any case, it’s probably an unlikely enough possibility that it’s not worth much in the way of resources, and has too much crank appeal to be of interest to many paleontologists, but the idea that we can totally reject the idea with our extremely limited knowledge of the past seems fairly ridiculous. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923.md?page=5)