What If The Dinosaurs Hadn’t Gone Extinct, But Evolved?

[staarker]

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. The skies darkened and plants stopped photosynthesizing. The plants died, then the animals that fed on them. The food chain collapsed. Over 90% of all species vanished. When the dust settled, all dinosaurs except a handful of birds had gone extinct.

But this catastrophic event made human evolution possible. The surviving mammals flourished, including little proto-primates that would evolve into us.

Imagine the asteroid had missed, and dinosaurs survived. Picture highly evolved raptors planting their flag on the moon. Dinosaur scientists, discovering relativity, or discussing a hypothetical world in which, incredibly, mammals took over the Earth.

This might sound like bad science fiction, but it gets at some deep, philosophical questions about evolution. Is humanity just here by chance, or is the evolution of intelligent tool-users inevitable?

Brains, tools, language and big social groups make us the planet’s dominant species. There are 8 billion Homo sapiens on seven continents. By weight, there are more humans than all wild animals.
https://anomalien.com/what-if-the-dinos ... t-evolved/

[crazy_nut]

I guess the bigger question should be...what if the asteroid didn't wipe-out all the dinosaurs and some survived and evolved over time? Maybe some evolved to blend in with modern day humans.

[dave23]

I guess the bigger question should be...what if the asteroid didn't wipe-out all the dinosaurs and some survived and evolved over time? Maybe some evolved to blend in with modern day humans.

This is exactly what I think about every time I hear something about lizard people. If some survived, they would have had millions of years to evolve before humans did.