65 million years ago, the asteroid impacted. The large non-avian dinosaurs (which had been in decline for millions of years) were finally finished off, and the ancestors of what would become all mammals, including us, crawled out from under their stumps and hollows and started invading vacant niches

In a mere 700,000 years, they had filled the nearly emptied niches all around them. By 15 million years ago, they had evolved into all the groups of mammals we know today, including monkeys and apes.



NB: This is how humans used to look like.

By 10 million years ago these little guys had diversified into all the basic groups of primates that still exist today. One group of these split off from the others, moved onto the African savanna, and adopted a hunting & hiding lifestyle that, combined with continual climate fluctuations, drove it to have ever more intelligence

By 1 million years ago, this group had evolved into several close relatives of ours, many of which could almost certainly paint and talk.

By a quarter million years ago, these had mostly all died out except for two groups, one of which stayed in Africa and kept getting smarter, and the other of which had migrated to Europe, adapted to the cold, and became the Neanderthals.

By 70,000 years ago, the climate had again shifted enough to permit the African group (us) to migrate into Europe, and this time they quickly out-competed and/or killed all the Neanderthals, though they did have some Barry White nights together, if ya know what I mean.

By 12,000 years ago, this group had absorbed some handy infection fighting genes from the Neanderthal cousins, and started domesticating crops and animals which it turned out could be carried east and west at similar latitudes to permit them to grow, conquer, and expand their range and impact like no other species in the history of the planet.

Then we built the A-bomb, and the last Saturn-V, but really that’s all just a footnote.
Now we appear to be trading this million-year roller coaster for reality TV and soda-pop. The times, they are a changing.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE ASTERIOD NEVER HITH THE EARTH



This is a big "What if?" question that many areas of speculative zoology have tried to tackle various times in literature. In truth, literally anything could have happened to the Earth if the K/T Extinction Event never took place. However, based on what we know about Mesozoic life, there are a number of things that we might be able to predict about this “Neo-Mesozoic”.


It's very likely that the "Age of Dinosaurs" would have persisted and aborted the "Age of Mammals". Mammals, although very diverse and successful in their own right during the Mesozoic, would likely not have evolved into larger forms. Instead they would've probably continued exploiting all of their own small-niche forms that they had their own much-deserved success in for millions of years. There would probably be a greater balance of placentals, marsupials, and monotremes in the world, as well as some more ancient lineages of mammiliforms inhabiting the planet. Homo sapiens would have almost certainly not evolved in this dinosaur-filled world.


Instead of Mammals, giant Dinosaurs would continue to inhabit all of the large-animal niches. Instead of mammoths, rhinos, chalicotheres, and titanotheres; there would instead be hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, therizinosaurs, and sauropods throughout the world's ecosystems. This might in turn affect the world's vegetation. It has been hypothesized that the presence of giant sauropods throughout the planet during the Mesozic prohibited the growth of large, dense forests like rainforests. If this is true, and assuming that giant sauropods continued being just as successful throughout the Neo-Mesozoic, then the current diversity seen in tropical rainforests today might not be present in this dinosaur-filled Neo-Mesozoic (except for places that lack such huge sauropods, such as tropical islands).


Sauropods might also affect their world in other amazing ways. It is now well-known throughout the scientific community that the meat industry is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the world due to cows and other grazing animals producing methane as they burp and fart (yes, seriously, cow farts are warming up the planet). Astonishingly, it has been shown in a 2012 study by David Wilkinson, Euan Nisbet, and Graeme Ruxton that sauropods alone could have produced and released about 570 million tons of methane per year. To put that into prospective, all methane sources on the planet today (human caused and non-human caused) produce 600 million tons of methane per year. At these levels, simply having large populations of sauropods on Earth could've postponed if not aborted the Pliestocene Ice Age, just like how our human actions today are going to postpone the next Ice Age. As a result, the evolution of cold-adapted animal species during numerous cooling periods throughout the Cenozoic may not have happened, simply because of sauropods.


However, sauropod presence might create a tropical wonderland for the planet, and would supercharge a lot of plant growth throughout the world's ecosystems. Flowering plants in particular would continue diversifying throughout this Neo-Mesozoic alongside Dinosaurs, producing new food sources for herbivorous animals and new niches to be filled. This might also encourage the evolution of more arboreal animal lineages to try and exploit these fruit-producing trees. These would likely include mammals, small dromaeosaurid dinosaurs, and birds. Grasslands might also evolve in a Neo-Mesozoic with the onset of high-altitude dry plateaus forming around 20 million years ago. This would encourage new lineages of grazing dinosaurs to evolve which are able to feed on the spreading savannah, steppe, and prairie grasslands.


Many types of birds that went extinct during the K/T Extinction Event would also likely still persist in this Neo-Mesozoic. As a result, many bird niches seen today would instead be inhabited by enantiornitheans, primitive euornitheans, and possibly even small, long-tailed arboreal paraves like Rahonavis. As a result, many of the advanced avians you might be used to would probably not have evolved in this Neo-Mesozoic. However, we know of primitive Charadriiformes (wading shorebirds), Anseriformes (ducks, geese, and their relatives), Galliformes (gamebirds like chickens and turkeys), Palaeognaths (large flightless birds like ostriches and tinomous, as well as early lithornithids), Pelicaniforms (Pelicans and related waterbirds), Grebes, and possibly even primitive Phorusrhacids ("Terror Birds" from the Cretaceous, so it is possible that these animals would still exist in the Neo-Mesozoic. Hesperornitheans would also likely persist and take up penguin and seal-like niches around the world.


Pterosaurs might also be present in this world, but it also might be possible that they would have gone extinct sometime during the Neo-Mesozoic. Although it doesn’t seem linked to bird competition, pterosaur diversity was dwindling at the end of the Cretaceous, with only Azhdarchid pterosaurs and a possible Nyctosaurid persisting until the Maastrichtian. This might suggest that pterosaurs were on the way out due to some ecological pressure that they couldn’t keep up with, and would’ve disappeared with or without the K/T Extinction taking place. Alternatively, perhaps pterosaurs would rebound given more evolutionary time in a Neo-Mesozoic. There’s no way of knowing exactly what would happen.


Other reptiles would also continue to prosper in a Neo-Mesozoic. Many lizard groups present in the Mesozoic would continue prospering, we’d probably have a more diverse Rhynchocephalia lineage than in our own Cenozoic, and turtles would continue along like they had been for the past 230 million years. Snakes might not be as diverse as they are today, as according to some studies snake diversification in the Cenozoic is directly tied to mammal diversification (snakes seem to have only gotten to their current diversity due to new predatory niches opened up by mammals), but they would likely still be present. Crocodilians, however, would probably be doing the best out of all non-dinosaur reptile lineages. Today crocodilians are only represented by ~23 aquatic-dwelling species, but during the time of the dinosaurs, they were much more diverse. Mesozoic crocodilians included dog-like, cat-like, armadillo-like, pig-like, iguana-like, rat-like, rabbit-like, platypus-like, and even hyperpredatory terrestrial theropod-like forms, all of which lived alongside their more traditional aquatic relatives which have survived to the present day. If the K/T Extinction event never happened, then it’s very likely that all these crocodillians would’ve persisted and continued evolving alongside dinosaurs.


The aquatic niches of the Neo-Mesozoic would also continue being as prosperous as they were in the Mesozoic, but would hold their own menagerie of creatures that we are not used to. Mesozoic marine reptiles would continue filling whale and dolphin-like niches in the Neo-Mesozoic, but other creatures would also replace animal life in the Neo-Mesozoic which we are not used to. For example, during the Mesozoic there was a major radiation of filter-feeding fishes called the Pachycormidae which filled baleen-whale like niches in the oceans of the world. The most famous of these is the Jurassic Leedsichthys, but there were relatives of this giant in the late Cretaceous, such as the giant Bonnerichthys from the Western Interior Seaway. We might also expect these giants to exist in Neo-Mesozoic seas alongside other lineages of fishes like the Ichthyodectidae, Coelacanths, and many lineages of Mesozoic sharks.


Invertebrates in the world would also be quite different. Ammonites would probably survive well in the Neo-Mesozoic alongside their relatives the Baculites and many other lineages of Mesozoic cephalopods (including giant forms). Starfish during the Mesozoic also filled niches outside of their modern seafloor-crawling forms, and some of these groups, such as the Uintacrinida, might’ve even free-floated in the currents somewhat like jellyfish. On land the insect ecosystems would also be very different. For example, a recent study has suggested that “dung beetles” during the Mesozoic did not feed on dung, but only evolved the trait after dinosaurs went extinct and mammals taking over the large herbivore niches of the planet. Instead, lineages of dung-feeding cockroaches probably filled the dung beetle niches of the planet alongside dinosaurs, and in a Neo-Mesozoic, we’d expect the same thing.

I don't see how this is different from biblical fiction

....

okrikaboi:
I don't see how this is different from biblical fiction

Well I honestly do not see similarities , The flood story maybe? I believe the Noah's flood story was plagiarized from the mesopitopian story of flood Creation, the epic of Gilgamesh , hi hello okirikaboi , lovely evening I believe ?

Fairy tale

dude all this crazy things are fake
all this crazy evolution are the aftermath of Noah flood

TheSourcerer:

Well I honestly do not see similarities , The flood story maybe? I believe the Noah's flood story was plagiarized from the mesopitopian story of flood creation , hi hello okirikaboi , lovely evening I believe ?

Hello @TheSourcerer
The evolution theory like gravity is just theory. I will quote you on a thread I'll create in the future so we can debate this intelligently. I like to keep an open mind. I like your posts unfortunately nairaland is a very mediocre website.

Telegram234:
dude all this crazy things are fake
all this crazy evolution are the aftermath of Noah flood

Kai...you are so uninformed and yet so crass about it.

To any scientist, archeologists,geologist and even geographers, OP's post is Rice and Chicken to them. Very fuqin tasty!!!

Who told you

TheSourcerer:
In a mere 700,000 years, they had filled the nearly emptied niches all around them. By 15 million years ago, they had evolved into all the groups of mammals we know today, including monkeys and apes.



NB: This is how humans used to look like.

What have humans evoked into. Has evolution stopped?

where did the asteroid come from, what initiated its action, who made it?

Spy360:

What have humans evoked into. Has evolution stopped?

well we have reached a point evolutionally where we do not need to evovle anymore to survive , in only a few thousand years modern human existed , We have totally removed ourselves from our original habitat , so theres really no needed evolution here , unless except the climate changes or another astronomical event that would force humans to further evolve , but for now, evolution is absolutly unnesesary , if anything we invoke our own evolution. Good Morning

okrikaboi:

Hello @TheSourcerer
The evolution theory like gravity is just theory. I will quote you on a thread I'll create in the future so we can debate this intelligently. I like to keep an open mind. I like your posts unfortunately nairaland is a very mediocre website.

it is , I try to stick to what is important to selves .
And well facts begin with theories , I diapoved of evolution before but oh the overwhelming evidence , okay take for instance this little test , if my finger is placed into a keyhole forcefully , come back 30 years , my finger would perfectly fit the keylock , on a larger scale , that's adaptation , evolution ...



I find you interesting and would't mind at all discussing with you.

Bunch of garbage!

If this your theory is considered in the first place, it means humans will evolved back to rats, rabbits and gorillas in another 10 million years!

This idea proves as much as humans are confused beings. Maybe someday we will develop wings and fly straight into outer space!

calddon:
where did the asteroid come from, what initiated its action, who made it?

asteriods are debris , they float in space ,like mountains no one ' created' them , they were formed , and what 'initiated' the action? Simple answer inertia The Early Universe was hellishly chaotic ,still is..., moons hitting moons, causing eruption of , ice , methane , gold,diamonds ,even hydrogen , when stars (suns) explode they further create these debris , and as the spread in space , they get colder , as the get colder they form solids , form these debris we call asteroids ,BTW the asteroid belt is massive.

nairaman66:
Bunch of garbage!

If this your theory is considered in the first place, it means humans will evolved back to rats, rabbits and gorillas in another 10 million years!

This idea proves as much as humans are confused beings. Maybe someday we will develop wings and fly straight into outer space!

Total Garbage True! Total Garbage, do tell me how the Earth formed .do tell me again how God used magic to create the known universe in seven days

luminouz:


Kai...you are so uninformed and yet so crass about it.

To any scientist, archeologists,geologist and even geographers, OP's post is Rice and Chicken to them. Very fuqin tasty!!!

Very Crass


Thank you and hope you're gonna have a great blissful morning

Puremind1225:
Fairy tail

Its Tale , but I can see why you see it as fairy tail after all you are the smartest tail detective have a grey day

What a joke. Science can't explain all

Telegram234:
dude all this crazy things are fake
all this crazy evolution are the aftermath of Noah flood

Exactly Genius!

phemmyfour:
What a joke. Science can't explain all

funny how you have a phone that can literally explain everything but still yeah science can't 'explain all' only God can , do tell , what's Gods explanation for not informing us about the Corona, and for not giving us a vaccine ?
Oh yeah he gives prophesies every now and then.

TheSourcerer:
funny how you have a phone that can literally explain everything but still yeah science can't 'explain all' only God can , do tell , what's Gods explanation for not informing us about the Corona, and for not giving us a vaccine ?

You have a brain, you should be able to differentiate between facts and truth .

2. I didn't even mention anything about God in my post.

Laughing..


Man evolved from rats..


Laughing

philiancoop:
Who told you

I read ,re-read ,made research ,postulated logical theories , made observations, travelled ,learned ,unlearned ,learned again and re-learned ... God did not tell me from his biblical scripture. Or primitive point of view .

nairaman66:
Bunch of garbage!

If this your theory is considered in the first place, it means humans will evolved back to rats, rabbits and gorillas in another 10 million years!

This idea proves as much as humans are confused beings. Maybe someday we will develop wings and fly straight into outer space!

fly into space like Jesus , been the first man in space without a helment ...

phemmyfour:
You have a brain, you should be able to differentiate between facts and truth .

2. I didn't even mention anything about God in my post.

Because you will....
Okay tell me without Bias , how the World was 'created'?

NeoWanZaeed:
Laughing..


Man evolved from rats..


Laughing

Well , we do all share a similar ansestor , we did not evovle from rats lol , we only primates , who evolved from 'Rats ' yes. But really these are not rats ..........! Omnivorous took over the Earth after everything was destroyed,light was blocked ,plants died ,only thing that could survive were these deep burrowing ominivourous rats ,that could survive on the carcass of the dinosaurs