Birds almost have a space program.

(Impish grin) Don't you mean "should have had," Ursa? In any case, dinosaurs aren't actually extinct, since birds are dinosaurs.

Had had had had a space program. The space programmed between had and had had had removed and had remained.

Had had should have had a space program, apparently.

Excuse me, should of had a space program.

If had had had had usage, it wouldn't of became extinct.

My inner pedant says that the title of this thread should "If the dinosaurs had had a space program...". The original preterite phrasing is written as if the dinosaurs were still alive; since they are not, you must use the pluperfect to convey this distinction.

I mourn the passing of the English mood and tense system more than I mourn the passing of the dinosaurs.

Well, I think that raptors are more credible as aliens then the Greys... Admittedly, that's not saying much.

Dinosaurs with a space program ? That's making me think of Predator...that's it ! Predators where raptors who had fled Earth before the cataclysm and who had evolved in space !

ROFLMAO! That gave me a good giggle, thanks, Drax. ^_^

This made me think of dinosaur scientists predicting the cataclysm that would destroy their civilization, only to be shouted down by the cataclysm deniers. Total Annihilation struck the dinosaur world ... but not before two particularly brilliant dino-scientists loaded their only son into a small space probe and sent him to the solar system with the red sun. The rays of the red sun would give him powers, making him seem like a god amongst dinosuars. So begins the story of Dino-boy.

what? It could've happened.

Sorry to make light of your post. I do get your point though.

I'm sure we've all heard this quip in the context of searching for near Earth objects that might impact the planet someday. But I have a little speculative quip in response.

What makes you think the dinosaurs didn't have a space program?

Our civilization is only a few millennia old, which is a tiny amount of time compared to the age of the Earth. And yet we're always finding surprising new archaeological discoveries that reveal entire chapter of our own history that we had no idea existed at all, or thought were only myths. From the ruins of Troy to the Minoan palace at Knossos to the Moundbuilder civilization of North America, we are always finding clues about an ancient past that have been sitting right under our noses the entire time.

If we could completely miss the signs of civilizations that existed only a few hundred or a few thousand years ago, what are the chances that there are traces of far older civilizations that we simply haven't recognized yet?

As far as we know, complex multicellular life has existed on Earth for at least half a billion years. That's a stupendous amount of time. Certainly more then enough time for multiple civilizations to have arisen and disappeared before humans ever arrived on the scene. If such a hypothetical civilization had existed, is it reasonable to suppose we would have found evidence of it? I don't think we necessarily would have.

Those of us who have lived our lives in developed urban areas are used to thinking of civilization as being ubiquitous. But urban areas are actually only a small fraction of the planet's surface. Once you get away from the cities, there are vast stretches of land that have a pretty low density of human artifacts. There are plenty of large areas where there's really no obvious trace of our civilization at all.

If you take that and try projecting it back into the past to a hypothetical former civilization, it seems to me that given the spotty nature of the fossil record there's an excellent chance that even a large and advanced culture could be easily hiding in the shadows of what we don't know. And remember that the fossil record is far from complete, and is highly selective. It only preserves things that are left in an environment conducive to preservation. And we only have access to that part of the fossil record that is today near the surface. Huge areas are either buried deep beneath the Earth or have been eroded away and lost.

And even if we did find trace evidence of a past civilization, I don't think we'd necessarily immediately recognize it as such. For example, a lot of people will see stone age tools in the environment and have no idea that they're anything other then natural rocks. Even something as artificial as modern plastics might not be immediately recognizable as such after a few million years of weathering.

So what do you guys think? Is it possible that human civilization might not be unique in Earth's history?