Suppose that asteroid that probably wiped out the dinosaurs had missed the earth. Would the dinosaurs have continued to thrive? They roamed the earth for about 165 million years. That's an incredibly long time. Humans have been around for just a fraction of that long. It is said that the demise of the dinosaurs gave mammals - like us humans - a chance to thrive. So, without that asteroid...
Your OH So Right
When you consider all the 4.6 billion yrs of "What If's" We all 7++ Billion of us are all ---
Soooooooooo Damn Lucky
Most exobiologists agree it was a one-in-a-million chance the dinosaurs were wiped out and mammals were able to take over. If it weren't for the asteroid, they say dinosaurs would have evolved to become smaller (they already were) and smarter eventually developing higher brain functions which is what probably happens on other planets. If ET ever comes to earth, odds are he'll be a reptile.
Without the asteroid it seems reasonable to imagine that vertebrate life on earth would be dominated by reptiles. Birds would probably constitute a prominent part of earth's vertebrate fauna, as would teleost fishes (bony skeleton, e.g. trout, minnows), and cartilagenous fishes (skeleton of cartilage, e.g. sharks, rays). There would be, as today, a major invertebrate fauna, and bacteria would be the dominant life forms.
Without the asteroid it seems reasonable to imagine that vertebrate life on earth would be dominated by reptiles. Birds would probably constitute a prominent part of earth's vertebrate fauna, as would teleost fishes (bony skeleton, e.g. trout, minnows), and cartilagenous fishes (skeleton of cartilage, e.g. sharks, rays). There would be, as today, a major invertebrate fauna, and bacteria would be the dominant life forms. Mammals would probably exist, but they and amphibians would have little chance of developing into large animals. We would be small, furry, endothermal animals, venturing out mostly at night. We would sit together in the moonlight, chewing on a roach.
Burtzy
Loc: Bronx N.Y. & Simi Valley, CA
...and cameras would have been designed to accommodate those long claws.
Burtzy
Loc: Bronx N.Y. & Simi Valley, CA
...not to mention that they'd probably have really odd looking eye-level finders.
jerryc41 wrote:
Suppose that asteroid that probably wiped out the dinosaurs had missed the earth. Would the dinosaurs have continued to thrive? They roamed the earth for about 165 million years. That's an incredibly long time. Humans have been around for just a fraction of that long. It is said that the demise of the dinosaurs gave mammals - like us humans - a chance to thrive. So, without that asteroid...
read the sci-fi book "west of eden"
Except that earth was much, much warmer during the time of the dinosaurs. More tropical than now. It is likely that warm blooded mammals would still have taken over as the climate slowly changed, and that a large number of dinosaurs would have failed to exist past the several ice ages that our planet has experienced.
Wow. I am impressed by the eloquence of many of you fellow UHH'ers. And I thought you were just old boring photographers with limited thought. Much to-do about nothing. In your many theories and ideas, you left out the reason why mammalian and human life exists in it's current form--namely our divine creator God...... The idea that bacteria would be the dominant life form is probably true on a planet left to its own "evolution". So it suffices to believe that none of this diversity would be here without an intelligent and deliberate design....What happened to the dinosaurs---we killed 'em.....
Pollution wouldn't be a problem, though. : )
Just think of the food supply!
T-Rex steaks, burgers, Jerky, etc.
And we'd all have leather jackets.
...Joe in NJ
AND, for the T-Rex.... slow moving photographers... as in the old bull fighter story... ah Senior, the bull, he doesn't always lose.
Senior Photog wrote:
Just think of the food supply!
T-Rex steaks, burgers, Jerky, etc.
And we'd all have leather jackets.
...Joe in NJ
DIRTY HARRY wrote:
AND, for the T-Rex.... slow moving photographers... as in the old bull fighter story... ah Senior, the bull, he doesn't always lose.
Did you mean senior or seƱor? I guess it could have been both.
Dennis
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