Would there be wild descendants of the soybean all over the world if we disappeared, can the domesticates go wild without us?
The PETM was associated with a mixup of plant and animal ranges, but it is generally explained as being the result of the 5+ degree C temperature spike shifting all their ranges poleward and this then allowing them to wind up at different longitudes when they shifted back towards the equator, plus the general chaos of a minor extinction churning the ecosystems.
If we go with the least likely part of the scenario mentioned above (antarctic habitat), Antarctica and South America and Australia all were faunally related after the breakup of Gondwana...
Maybe the crop plants weren’t the best example to use. If we all disappeared tomorrow, there would still be rats and dingos and feral hogs in Australia. There would be rats on almost every island worldwide. There would be Japanese knotweed and buddleja and rhododendrons everywhere. There would be bougainvillea across all the tropics. There would be American crayfish and Pacific oysters in Britain. There would be Asian carp in North America. There might be hippopotamuses in South America! Ie it’s not just domesticates, it’s the far larger number of wild species we’ve moved around (probably thousands or more—I couldn’t find an estimate with a quick google search)
If any comparable thing had happened in the past, palaeobiology and genetic taxonomy should be a godawful mess instead of dovetailing nicely with the geological evidence on continental drift. Now maybe I’m just ignorant, and evolutionary biologists are going round scratching their heads and wondering how ancestral koalas suddenly showed up on Madagascar 55 million years ago, or some equivalent mystery. But I’m not aware of any such problem. Maybe the Antarctic habitat explains that, but I have trouble squaring the idea of a civilisation large-scale enough to cause runaway global warming with one that leaves no trace 55 million years later.
The world would be a more interesting place if there was a previous industrial civilisation. I just don’t think there is evidence to support that proposition, and even 55 million years later, there should be some traces. But if someone digs up fossil plastics in Antarctica or something, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.
My brain goes interesting places from here.
Would there be wild descendants of the soybean all over the world if we disappeared, can the domesticates go wild without us?
The PETM was associated with a mixup of plant and animal ranges, but it is generally explained as being the result of the 5+ degree C temperature spike shifting all their ranges poleward and this then allowing them to wind up at different longitudes when they shifted back towards the equator, plus the general chaos of a minor extinction churning the ecosystems.
If we go with the least likely part of the scenario mentioned above (antarctic habitat), Antarctica and South America and Australia all were faunally related after the breakup of Gondwana...
Maybe the crop plants weren’t the best example to use. If we all disappeared tomorrow, there would still be rats and dingos and feral hogs in Australia. There would be rats on almost every island worldwide. There would be Japanese knotweed and buddleja and rhododendrons everywhere. There would be bougainvillea across all the tropics. There would be American crayfish and Pacific oysters in Britain. There would be Asian carp in North America. There might be hippopotamuses in South America! Ie it’s not just domesticates, it’s the far larger number of wild species we’ve moved around (probably thousands or more—I couldn’t find an estimate with a quick google search)
If any comparable thing had happened in the past, palaeobiology and genetic taxonomy should be a godawful mess instead of dovetailing nicely with the geological evidence on continental drift. Now maybe I’m just ignorant, and evolutionary biologists are going round scratching their heads and wondering how ancestral koalas suddenly showed up on Madagascar 55 million years ago, or some equivalent mystery. But I’m not aware of any such problem. Maybe the Antarctic habitat explains that, but I have trouble squaring the idea of a civilisation large-scale enough to cause runaway global warming with one that leaves no trace 55 million years later.
The world would be a more interesting place if there was a previous industrial civilisation. I just don’t think there is evidence to support that proposition, and even 55 million years later, there should be some traces. But if someone digs up fossil plastics in Antarctica or something, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.