Sixty-six Million Years Ago, asteroidThe force of 10 billion atomic bombsAnd changed the course and direction of evolution.
The skies darkenedThe plants stopped photosynthesizing. The plants died and the animals that ate them also died. The food chain was destroyed. Over All species: 90 percent vanished. After the dust settled, everything was restored to its former glory. dinosaursExcept A few birds had gone extinct.
Human evolution was possible because of this terrible event. The few survivors survived, and they thrived. proto-primatesThis would become us.
Imagine an asteroid that was missed by dinosaurs. Imagine highly evolved raptors planting the flag. The Moon. DinosaurResearchers discovered relativity and discussed hypothetical worlds in which mammals could take over the Earth.
It might sound like bad science fiction but it raises some profound philosophical questions about the nature of evolution. Is it just a chance that humanity is here, or is the inevitable evolution of intelligent tool-users?
We are the dominant species on Earth because of our brains, language, brains and tools. There are 8 billion Homo sapiensSeven continents. There are seven continents. More humans than any wild animal.
We’ve Modified half of Earth’s landWe need to eat. It is possible to argue that animals like humans are It is inevitable that things will change..
The 1980s saw the rise of the palaeontologist Dale RussellA thought experiment was proposed in which The carnivorous dinosaur evolved to become an intelligent tool user. The “dinosauroid” had a big brain with opposable thumbs, and was able to walk upright.
Although it is possible, it is unlikely. The biology of an animal influences the direction of its evolutionary development. Your endpoints are limited by your starting point.
Drop out of college and you won’t become a brain surgeon, lawyer or NASA rocket scientist. However, you may be an actor, musician, or entrepreneur. Life’s paths can open doors or close others. This is also true for evolution.
Think about the size and power of dinosaurs. Sauropod dinosaurs are the first to appear in the Jurassic. BrontosaurusThe kin These giants weighed between 30 and 50 tonnes up to 30 meters long – ten times the weight of an elephant and as long as a blue whale.
This occurred in many groups, including Diplodocidae, Brachiosauridae, Turiasauridae, Mamenchisauridae Titanosauria.
This occurred on different continents and at different times. It also happened in different climates – from deserts to rainforests. Other dinosaurs who lived in these environments did not become supergiants.
These animals were all sauropods, which was the common thread. Something about sauropod anatomy – lungsHollow bones with a High strength-to-weight ratioMetabolic, metabolic, or All of these things – unlocked their evolutionary potential. It allowed them to grow in ways that no other land animals could have done before or since.
Similar to the carnivorous dinosaurs, large, ten-meter-long, multi-tonne predators were repeatedly developed. It has been around for 100 million years. megalosaurids, allosaurids, carcharodontosaurids, neovenatorids,Final words tyrannosaursThey evolved huge apex predators.
Dinosaurs were able to use large bodies for their purposes. Big brains Not so much. However, Dinosaurs showed a weak trend towards increasing brain size over time. Jurassic dinosaurs like Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus Small brains.
By the Cretaceous 80 million years later tyrannosaursDuckbills have larger brains than other species. The despite its size, however, the T. rex brain still weighed just 400 grams. A Velociraptor brain weighed 15 grams. The average human brain is 1.3 kilograms.
Dinosaurs did enter new niches over time. The number of small herbivores grew and bird species diversified. Later, long-legged species evolved. This suggests an arms race between fleetfooted predators (prey) and their long-legged counterparts.
Dinosaurs appear to have lived increasingly complex social lives. They first lived in herdsand evolving elaborate hornsDisplay and fighting. Dinosaurs are able to reproduce themselves and create giant herbivores as well as carnivores, but with very small brains.
It’s hard to imagine that dinosaurs would have done much differently in the 100 million year of their history if an asteroid hadn’t intervened. We’d still likely have those huge, long-necked herbivores as well as tyrannosaur like predators.
Although they may have had slightly larger brains than humans, there is little evidence that they would have been able to evolve into geniuses. They are unlikely to have been displaced by mammals. When the asteroid struck, dinosaurs ruled their environments until the end.
Mammals, meanwhile, had different constraints. They didn’t evolve supergiant herbivores nor carnivores. However, they had large brains. Orcas, sperm whales and baleen whales have evolved massive brains that are as large or larger than ours.
Today, a few dinosaur descendants – birds like crows and parrots – have Complex brains. They can be used ToolsTalk, count and talk. However, it is mammals such as elephants, dolphins, and apes that have the most complex brains.
Also, did eradicating the dinosaurs ensure intelligence would be developed in mammals?
Maybe not.
Although they may limit the endpoints, starting points don’t necessarily guarantee them. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg All dropped out of college. If dropping out made you a multibillionaire instantly, then every college dropout would be wealthy. You need luck and opportunities to get started in the right places.
Our evolution is not inevitable, according to the evolutionary history of primates. Over time, in Africa, primates evolved into big-brained, intelligent apes. 7 Million YearsProduced modern humans. However, primate evolution took a different path elsewhere.
When South America was reached by monkeysThey just evolved into new species of monkeys 35 million years ago. At least three different times did primates reach North America, 55 million years ago, 50,000,000 years ago?, and 20 million years ago.
But they didn’t evolve to be a species capable of making smartphones and nuclear weapons. They went extinct for reasons that we don’t know.
Primate evolution took place in Africa, and Africa alone. A little bit about Africa’s fauna, geography and flora Evolution of the apes is a result: terrestrial, big-bodied, big-brained, tool-using primates.
Even with the departure of the dinosaurs, evolution was possible only if there were both chance and luck.
Nicholas R. LongrichSenior Lecturer in Paleontology, Evolutionary Biology University of Bath
This article was republished by The ConversationUnder a Creative Commons License Learn more Original article.
