# You are transported back to 70 million BCE **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 25, 2025, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335 "2025-07-25T21:33:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/41 "2025-07-26T18:07:52Z")
It seems like you should take a lifetime’s worth of food. It would take a very long time to determine what could safely be eaten, and there would be great risk regardless of how careful you are. Consider trying to figure out which mushrooms you can eat. While some of them are a great food source, others are so poisonous that just touching them can make you sick. Sometimes it takes a while for the damage they cause to be detected. By the time you start to feel the effects, your liver has already been damaged. It seems like eating anything from back then would be so risky that to be safe, you could only try one thing at a time in tiny amounts over a very long time frame to minimize the chance of serious consequences. ---
**Author:** ![ricepad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/42 "2025-07-26T18:09:14Z")
A lifetime’s worth of food may only be a candy bar. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/43 "2025-07-26T18:12:22Z")
Very few meats are poisonous, and the few that are usually aren’t subtle (i.e., they taste terrible) so you’d almost certainly be safe there. All you’d need are plant foods. And even there, not very many are poisonous: Most plants that are inedible, it’s just by virtue of them being too tough for us to eat. There’s absolutely no reason to go experimenting with fungi, though. Most of them are edible, too, but the ones that aren’t can be extremely bad, and often don’t show any symptoms until it’s too late. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/44 "2025-07-26T18:26:47Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > it doesn’t mean you’re hunting T rex. But if you did… Tastes like chicken. > **[T-Rex's Closest Relative: The Chicken](https://www.zarebasystems.com/articles/t-rex-closest-relative-the-chicken?srsltid=AfmBOopp38x4P72_zbJ2azDFBsoeDdKGzpAv2HO-DgxQOwlzIgBb8LI-)** > > Like most other animals, the species of chickens that we are familiar with today is the result of evolution and adaptation. Believe it or not, the chicken has an ancestor that was dominating the planet millions of years ago. The chicken is, indeed ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/45 "2025-07-26T18:35:11Z")
It’s kind of true but kind of misleading to say that the chicken is the T. rex’s closest living relative. Nothing’s more closely related… but it’s a many-way tie for first, between all of the birds. You’d be just as correct to say that it’s a sparrow, or an eagle, or an emu. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/46 "2025-07-26T18:49:13Z")
I almost forgot a kettle, a pan and a pot. No teflon nonsense: cast iron, copper with tin coating, forged pans, things like that that you can clean scrubbing them with sand. And glasses for the booze (see above). Style! The luggage is getting heavy… ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/47 "2025-07-26T19:06:46Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > It would take a very long time to determine what could safely be eaten, and there would be great risk regardless of how careful you are. 70 million years ago, angiosperms had evolved but were not yet the dominant form of plant life. So fruits and nuts are going to be harder to find. How common is it for birds or fish to be super poisonous? I know about pufferfish and their whole deal, but how often would this be a problem for river fish? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/48 "2025-07-26T19:15:09Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Is a T-Rex or a Raptor going to be more dangerous than any Pleistocene predator? In North America, where the T-Rex roamed, paleontologists have estimated there were something around 20 of them. Very rare. The Utahraptor would be the dangerous one. They were the size of the ones in the films, while the velociraptors were about the size of a turkey. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Primitive humans would be far more dangerous than dinosaurs. Not in the late Cretaceous. > [@Banksiaman](#): > > In the Pleistocene, in most places humans would not be only the apex predator or have modified their environment significantly to our benefit yet. 20K ago, you might not even see any humans in North America, especially if you stayed away from the West Coast. Smilodons would be dangerous, but not much more than big cats in africa today. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/49 "2025-07-26T19:33:27Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > In North America, where the T-Rex roamed, paleontologists have estimated there were something around 20 of them. What? No, this is an unfounded claim. Twenty animals is not a sustainable breeding population, and Tyrannosaurus rex was around in North America for two and a half million years. And colonized Asia (or came from Asia) as Tyrannosaurus bataar. There were likely around 20, **000** rexes around at any given time. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/50 "2025-07-26T19:35:38Z")
In addition to not being a sustainable population, if there were that few of them, we’d never have found any. The actual statistic that @DrDeth might be misremembering is that we’ve only found 20ish of them. But of course, the vast majority of living things never get fossilized. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/51 "2025-07-26T19:40:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > In addition to not being a sustainable population, if there were that few of them, we’d never have found any. And of course, we know very little about highland species. Almost all we know about dinosaurs comes from fossils found in lowland, wet areas. Coasts, flood plains, swamps, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/52 "2025-07-26T19:40:16Z")
One of the most complete, and possibly largest, is just down the street from me: > **[Scotty (dinosaur)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotty_(dinosaur))** > > Scotty is the nickname for the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, catalogued as RSM P2523.8, that was discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1991. The fossilised remains were painstakingly removed, almost completely by hand, over two decades from the rock in which they were embedded. When the preparation was complete in 2011, a ~65% complete T. rex skeleton was revealed. > Since its discovery and extensive subsequent study, Scotty has been referred to as the largest T. rex ever discovered in the world, the... (Plus the only known sample of fossilised T-rex dung.) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/53 "2025-07-26T20:02:31Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > There were likely around 20, **000** rexes around at any given time. > What the team found, to be published this week in the journal Science, is that about 20,000 adult T. rexes probably lived at any one time, give or take a factor of 10 > **[How many T. rexes were there? Billions. - Berkeley News](https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/04/15/how-many-t-rexes-were-there-billions/)** > > By analyzing what's known about the dinosaur, paleontologists conclude there were 2.5 billion T. rex over the 2.4-million-year existence of the species ---
**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:** [July 26, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/54 "2025-07-26T21:41:01Z")
2.5 billion over 2.4 million years - so about 1,000 new rexes (rexi?) a year, implying an average lifespan around 20 years? ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/55 "2025-07-26T22:07:21Z")
What kills in a survival situation. 1. Shelter 2. Water 3. food ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/56 "2025-07-26T22:15:10Z")
A large caliber weapon may give predetors ‘pause’ not gonna hurt them much. But may make them think twice. Though I doubt if someting completely unusuall, and startling would make them (talking T-Rex) hesitate for more than a few seconds. I very much doubt their brain development is that advanced. Still I would like a water purifier, bug repellent, and a large caliber weapon, or three. And a companion that knows how to shoot. ---
**Author:** ![BayLeaves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@BayLeaves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BayLeaves)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/57 "2025-07-26T22:33:12Z")
The really dangerous diseases evolved with agriculture and civilization. I doubt anything older than fifteen thousand years would be dangerous. Paleolithic people would quickly learn to be afraid of firearms. You would need a semi automatic rifle with a bayonet on the end of it and plenty of ammunition. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/58 "2025-07-26T23:07:57Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > What? No, this is an unfounded claim. Twenty animals is not a sustainable breeding population, and Tyrannosaurus rex was around in North America for two and a half million years. And colonized Asia (or came from Asia) as Tyrannosaurus bataar. > > There were likely around 20, **000** rexes around at any given time. Yes, I didnt put a “K” after my 20, my error sorry. You are correct. Still very few for an entire continent. There are 20K Grizzlies in Canada, and somewhat more than that in Alaska, but seeing one except in a few hot spots is uncommon. > [@enipla](#): > > A large caliber weapon may give predetors ‘pause’ not gonna hurt them much. But may make them think twice. A large caliber would drop known raptors, and a 9mm would kill a velociraptor. But yeah, a T-rex would need a big elephant gun, or a 50 bmg sniper rifle. They could be somewhat harder to kill than an elephant- the biggest elephant weighing in at 24000 lb, and a T-rex at 20000lb or so. Suggested reading is “A Gun for Dinosaur” by DeCamp. > [@enipla](#): > > Still I would like a water purifier, bug repellent, and a large caliber weapon, or three. And a companion that knows how to shoot. There might or might not be giardia - it is pretty damn old but not tens of millions as far as we know, Still, good idea. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/59 "2025-07-26T23:16:20Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > so about 1,000 new rexes (rexi?) a year Reges. At least, if you’re going with the Latin. In English, “rexes” is also perfectly acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2025, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335/60 "2025-07-26T23:21:37Z")
I’d bring dogs, unaltered male and female, to establish a small breeding population to replace losses from wildlife encounters. They’d be useful for hunting, protection, and eating stuff you’re not quite sure if it’s safe – offer some to the pack member you’d least regret losing and see what happens. Yes, candidate plant foods too; dogs are almost as omnivore as humans. I’d probably wait, though, to try anything if I hadn’t seen evidence that some critter was already eating it. I’d also need a reliable fire starter mechanism, one that didn’t rely on fuel. ETA: Oh, yeh, weapons/tools: an assortment of knives for various purposes, with a whetstone or two. And a crossbow, with spare strings and arrowheads, figuring you could likely make arrows themselves with local vegetation of some kind. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-transported-back-to-70-million-bce/1021335.md?page=4)