Too many variables to be sure, but using educated guesses, predict what our biosphere’s makeup would look like today if the Chixulub impactor never impacted.
Points to consider: Would our planet still be dinosauric, with large dinos reigning supreme? Would the larger dinos have gone extinct long ago with the medium and/or small dinos taking over, or would the large dinos simply have evolved into smaller, but still dominant species? Would the mammals still become dominant, only later? Would intelligence still evolve to the same extent? Who’s intelligence, dinosauric, or mammalian? Bonus question: would Earth be a more hospitable planet for most fauna and flora had we not been impacted?
Eventually, within about 4 million years of the (non) impact, an intelligent species of Dinosaurs would have evolved, risen to global dominance, visited the moon 62 million years ago, and eventually destroyed themselves in a global thermonuclear war.
Global cooling from the war would have brought the end to dinosaurs, and 62 million years later, mammals would have arisen and an intelligent species of hominid would have achieved global dominance, and visited the moon 50 years ago.
Everything would be the same, except there’d be more land in Mexico, and background radiation would be slightly but measurably higher.
Absolutely any answer would be nothing more than the very rawest guess. This is like asking for the lottery numbers for every lottery on the world for every year for the rest of human civilization.
That would have significantly altered the fossil record, with hints about ancient technology accelerating the technological evolution of humans. Perhaps our technological advances would have outpaced our moral evolution, and we would destroy ourselves much sooner.
I don’t believe the premise is too outlandish to speculate about. This article, for example, posits if the asteroid hit just a few minutes earlier hitting deep ocean, the dinosaurs would not have been so massively wiped out and they speculate about what Earth may look like today as a result.
Dinosaurs were around far longer than they have been extinct. I think I read they had been on earth for around 160 million years, before the meteor. In that time, it appears they did not develop any sort of advanced intelligence, at least anything beyond what we consider “reptilian brain”. So, I would not see any reason to suspect they would have risen to higher intelligence in the last 66 million years.
I understand the rise of mammals is related to the absence of dinos in most ecological niches, so the presence of dinos the last 66 million years would seem to suggest they’d still be in charge and mammals would still be small and crawling around in holes. I think there are studies that indicate some dino species were in decline at the time of the impact, but without the event, it’s more possible that other dino species would have become more dominant and filled niches the mammals were about to exploit.
As for fauna, my guess is most of the species that were alive then would still be present today. Flowers evolved right in the middle of the dino era, but all of the fruits and vegetables we know today would not have been selected (by humans) and domesticated.
Short answer, IMHO the world would look much like it did the day before the meteor impact.
You’d be getting Kentucky Fried Rodent in red and white buckets with a stylized sage-looking raptor in a seersucker suit and a string bow tie on the front. Everything else would be exactly the same except instead of the abortion debate there would be the ‘egg-crushing controversy’, and the Supreme Court would issue ‘skawks’ instead of ‘opinions’.
The article is absolute and pure fantasy. Evolution is the result of countless coin tosses happening every single day. Any predictions about it are absolutely pure fantasy. But if you are interested in the subject as a pie-in-the sky form of entertainment, Darren Naish (no relation) has many articles about it. Here’s one.
A version of the human race would have appeared alongside the dinosaurs. Seeing the utility of the large beasts, they would adapt them for use as tools and appliances, integrating them into daily life. An abundance of stone types worldwide would become the basis of civilization, permeating everything from industry to language. It was a prosperous period, riding high for years due to a sudden economic boom after the discovery of a vast multivitamin deposit at one of the Slate Rock and Gravel Company’s sites.
However, this era would come to a tragic end soon after the introduction of Winston cigarettes.
This is the plot of West of Eden by Harry Harrison.
The basic premise is that dinos become sentient and develop a kind of biotechnology. When the climate starts cooling (spelling doom for the cold-blooded species but also their living cities), they go hunting for new land. They find the Americas and discover human-analogues. Conflict ensues.
It is a very silly book, but enjoyable. Par for the course when it comes to Harrison.
‘‘It is therefore left to ladder-day travelers to find out for themselves that today’s modern Earth is little more than concrete, strip joints, and Dino Burger Bars.’’
believe it or not, I have read that theory before about 20 years ago where it theorized that if humans and dinosaurs had been around at the same time they eventually evolved into a flintstones type of society where the less violent dinos would have been domesticated like farm animals today although I wonder what would have happened to the t rex to chicken theory …
No, I think the Ice Age would have put paid to the large, unfeathered dinosaurs. My WAG is that mid-sized feathered dinosaurs would be the dominant species on land.
I don’t see why. Intelligence isn’t a necessary end-point of evolution.
I don’t see it making a large difference, really, versus the other ongoing things that affect that, like orbital cycles, tectonics, vulcanism and the like.
I wonder how many fruits were selected by monkeys and elephants and bears and other large fruit-eating mammals, and whether dinosaurs would have selected different fruits. Maybe ripe fruit would mostly be blue, instead of mostly being red.
My thought is that without humans, the more immediate adverse effects to the biosphere (e.g. deforestation, global warming, etc.) would be eliminated (unless dinos evolved to be combustion engine driving, species decimating, polluters). Certainly plate tectonics, geological and astrophysical effects will have more effect on the planet long term. AFAIK there’s nothing any species can do that would effect Earth much in the long run, short of cracking it in half.
I’m going to go against the grain a little and speculate that mammals might have gradually pushed dinosaurs out of many of their niches.
Because AIUI dinosaurs are a product of a time where the atmosphere contained both more oxygen and more CO2, and temperatures were warmer. The gigantic dinosaurs in particular were really at the limit of what organisms can survive in such optimal conditions. They might have been particularly at risk.
But in general mammals’ more advanced homeostasis mechanisms would have been a big advantage against many species through the various ice ages and changes to the atmosphere.
I’m not saying wholesale extinction though. It would be an interesting reality with probably more diverse species than the world Homo sapiens entered (obviously though the lack of diversity we see today is 99% our own fault).
It’s an interesting thought. I believe birds (largely accepted as evolving from dinosaurs) have a digestive tract that permits most seeds to pass thru, in order to germinate later. I think a lot of mammals’ GI tracts destroy most seeds. So if dinosaurs had a similar system as birds, and allowed most seeds to pass thru to germinate later, the fruits would have had to develop characteristics attractive to dinos (the way fruits today use color and sweetness to attract us. There may be some fruits today that were present during the dino era, like durian, breadfruit, jackfruit, which are large and found in tropical areas, and to the human eye look inedible, but who knows what color or flavors the dinosaurs would have preferred. I think I saw a video somewhere of an elephant going crazy to get a breadfruit, nearly destroying the tree. I guess if it were somehow beneficial to the plant, it would evolve ways to get the dinos to help spread it’s seeds.