Ever wonder what happened to the dinos? Was it an asteroid, aliens, or... failed technology?

What REALLY happened to the dinosaurs?

The current somewhat ossified scientific establishment, sifting industriously through the dusty fossil record, is generally of the conclusion that a large meteor smashed into the Earth in the vicinity of the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago; the ensuing ejecta resulted in global cooling and the demise of the dinos. There is even the possibility that material was flung up far enough to cause Earth to transiently (in geologic terms) exhibit a faintly Saturnian set of rings further reducing insolation.

Well, that's a good hypothesis ne theory (theory, since the unwashed masses have been sucked into belief; theory, like democracy is majority rule not correctness;)-- based on looking at macroscopic lumps of fossil bones and finding spectroscopic traces of iridium in sediments 65 million years old.

But-- what if the long dead dinos not only were intelligent, but also more advanced technologically than current humanity?

Ah you say, what about the artifacts such a civilization would leave in the 65 million year old fossil record? Where are the metal tools, the garbage dumps, the concrete buildings? Scientists just love a good garbage dump, but they haven't found aeons old dino dumps! Oh! And how can those dinos do anything without opposable thumbs?

The answer is [ref: Analog SF story TBD] that metallic tools are high energy artifacts which would have been converted over those millions of years into another lower energy level material-- would anyone now realize what this discoloration in the vicinity of a TyroRex is? Is the discoloration the dino equivalent of a spanner, or just a random rock that happened to be located next to the dino when the dino died? Not only that, but where does anyone think that the metallic materials in oil came from anyway? Yes! The metallics are the dissolved remains of dino tooling!

As for middens and other such repositories of trash, those were policed by dino created organic machines now known as mammals. Mammals are subservient things, uncommonly ugly by discerning dino standards and abysmally stupid; able to live in environments the dinos find unbearably harsh, but ideally designed for keeping the grounds spic and span. Developed over millions of years, naturally there is a plentiful fossil record of determined dino development of mammalian organic machines-- development by dino-selection not Darwinian-selection.

With the use of nano technology (any Archeologists looking for remnants of nano in dino bone beds? No? Hmmmmm. Might be missing somthing there!) the dinos could live in what appear to be bucolic marshes without the need for the harsh unnatural lines of buildings and other permanent structures so beloved by the currently ascendent mammalian Monkeydom. With nano and gene-gineered mammals to clean up the old waste sites, buildings, and other detritus normally associated with the underside of an advanced society one hardly expects to easily find any trace of a garbage dump or other artifacts that monkeys have provincially come to expect as traces of a mighty civilization.

Finally, since when is an opposable thumb required for tool use? With the advent of nano neural connect one hardly needs such a crude artifice as an opposable thumb to manipulate the environment ('course, it might take longer to get to the Kurzweil singularity, but hey the dinos were around for millions of years, far longer than the monkeys). The archeo-monkeys, you see, have this monkey-centric idea that the only possible intelligence has to look and act like a monkey!!

So the dinos have an advanced, if very aggressive (if you believe Hollywood), civilization. What is one thing that this civilization needs to prosper? Energy. All that nano and local/global environment control takes a lot of energy-- energy which comes from the warm yellow sun (since the dinos are now oil, they could hardly use oil, and besides, all these terrestrial energy sources ruin the charm and color of the local environment not to speak of deplorable effect on the pleasant scent of decaying vegetation). Well, the dinos would hardly want to clutter up the transcendant beauty of the swamps with solar panels either, so naturally the dinos fashioned a solar power satellite out of a captured asteroid. A big metallic asteroid, which beamed the warming microwaves down to the Earth's surface (Cancer? who cares, they have nano. Be happy.). Gene tailored grasses in the less hospitable non-tropical areas converted the microwaves to more useful energy forms (anyone looking for evidence of plant structures that can convert microwaves to -anything-? No? Hmmmmm. Might be missing something!).

But there was a snake in the Elysian fields of dino-dom. Or perhaps one should say there was a mammal in dino Eden. It's that Hollywood aggressiveness you see. For the dinos seethed with competing factions that were the seeds of dino-doom, leading to the downfall of all dino-dom; factions competing with a deviousness that would befuddle Machiavelli and make any denizen of Byzantium gape in awe, factions resulting in dino-death... At the apex of the dino civilization one faction based at the dino equivalent of the Andromeda Labs Complex had developed a deadly weapon, a deadly bioweapon-- a bioweapon [by comparison to dinos] that was small, fast, could operate in conditions ranging from arctic to equatorial, carnivorous, with a ferocious feral fecundity nearing that of troublesome Tribbles... and worst of all configured for tool using! Having banned nukes (if you're that aggressive and cold blooded, the nuclear winter option is asking for it, not to speak of the havoc that the EMP would wreak on the infrastructure) the opposing dino faction was left with the unsavory but final trump card of kinetic kill, of dropping the monstrous solar power satellite on the Andromeda Labs Complex where biomachine development was centered... Alas, it was too late. Or perhaps there were too many wheels within wheels in the labyrinth of dino deviousness. For, the gene codes foreshadowing intelligence had already been released as a required security upgrade to the little ubiquitous clean up mammals loose upon the surface of the devastated planet. 65 million years later no one remembers the Promethean dino who provided the intelligence gene codes to the mammals!! All that remains of the Andromeda Labs Complex are the traces of iridium from the thick asteroidal shell of the downed solar power satellite-- and billions upon billions of self replicating organic machines containing the patterned codons for the spark of intelligence implanted 65 million years ago.

For you see, with the loss of the energy input from the solar power satellite the nano withered, and a long cold era started, and the dinos lay down in the snow and died out. The mammals, though, designed for such harsh conditions, went forth and multiplied... and multiplied... and multiplied...

Eventually the monkeys became ascendent of the mammals-- powering their civilization on the oily remains of that which went before. Naturally, the environment is a mess, since the mammals are most at home in dumps and middens which they were originally designed to be attracted to!

Can we patent 'alien' tech, or is that 'prior art'? After all, the USPTO allows patenting of discovered plant and animal products, which IMHO is prior art but the USPTO does not think so, so one would presume that if nano was found it could be patented by the finder! Wow! There's wealth in that coal lump Santa left me last year!