I understand your point, but to me, the monk parakeet just isn’t as good. They’re introduced, which is a strike against them in my book - I don’t believe the natural Founder Effect explanation when they were so widely imported and released into the wild. And dadgummit, they’re just not as pretty as the Carolina 'keets.
Most of my ideas were already taken - I have a fondness for extinct small island species, so the thylacine, the Elephant Bird from Madagascar, the Moa from New Zealand, the large eagle that preyed on the New Zeland Moa, the dodo bird were all candidates.
Seeing as all those have been mentioned, I’ll have to take a dinosaur, seeing as how those are so popular and have so many unresolved questions about them. If I’m going to bring back a dinosaur, of course I want the biggest one possible, for example Amphicoelias fragillimus, a sauropod that may have measured up to 60 m ( 196 feet) long and weighed up to 122 (metric) tons.
P.S. What are the rules of this little experiment? Does it have to be a “known” species, meaning one that we have described from fossils?
If not, then my answer would be “the very first living species”; that would be quite interesting as well. I’ll leave it up to the biologists/zoologists/chemists/physicists to argue over what exactly “the very first living species” means.
One of the smaller pterosaurs.
Sized between the insect-eaters, & something big enough to gulp a pigeon.
You get to clean up the Paraceratheriums poop.
But you don’t say a word to any of the pterodactyl lovers. Those giant monsters will just be flying around overhead, dropping their dinosaur poop wherever they want.
Make sure you’ve got your microscope on hand, then.
How the hell could this go extinct? If it was as great as all that, somebody should have been trying to grow it. (Yes, I did read the link, but sometimes human behavior baffles me.)
You made my day with this: http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Q0862JcEg &#t=7m37s. I need a thread with YouTube link hacks. Can ya do it?
Other texts I have read suggest that such efforts were made, but failed.
I suspect it needed to be pollinated by an insect, and if that insect could only feed on/breed in Silphium, then the insect vector is gone, too.
I’d like to see that weird “hallucigenia” animal from the Burgess Shale.
Come to think of it, bringing back all those creatures from the Cambrian would be cool.
I also read that article, and this one as well.
Other than the T. Rex, I have to pick #5 from that list, the Gastornis
Plus, who knows? They may still be around (for whatever definition you want to apply to “species”, “living”, “very first”, etc.)
Yes! I would have linked that one, but Googling “gigantic flightless carnivorous bird” leads elsewhere.
p.s. the Cracked article on Gastornis features YouTube video of possibly the gayest presenter I have ever seen.
Another vote for Homo neanderthalensis. I’m particularly interested in how our two species would interact.
Why does every thread on the SDMB have to turn into Bush-bashing?
Regards,
Shodan
Wooly mammoths.
I want to hunt one.
With a spear.
DAMN YOU!
I was going to be all different-like and smarmy for saying this but was beaten to it.
