I know we have many animals like Opossums and Crocodiles, alligators etc that have remained almost unchanged for a very long time. We have many other creatures that have evolved and changed and the species itself never went extinct. What are the key factors that contribute to long term success.
Humans seem to be using up resources and destroying environment at a rate faster than we can sustain. Will our intelligence make the needed adaptations soon enough? I don’t believe nature cares one way or the other.
Some of it is just luck. Dinosaurs were around for around 160 million years – much longer than they’ve been gone. Some studies say that there was a decrease in dinosaur diversity right before the KT extinction, but dinosaurs as a group had gone through rough patches before, and they’d recovered. So if a certain large rock hadn’t smashed into the Earth at just the wrong time, many groups of dinosaurs might have lived on. Likewise, if the meteor had struck during the Triassic, some dinosaur groups might have been relatively well adapted to survive, and may have made up much of the recolonizing effort. And would the smaller pterosaurs of the Jurassic have fared better, like birds did? The fossil record seems to show that birds were replacing pterosaurs in smaller niches while the largest pterosaurs grew bigger and bigger. Maybe the agile, little Jurassic pterosaurs could have survived.
With regard to humans, the evolutionary history of other species really has nothing to teach us. Our fate will not depend on our intelligence adapting, that evolutionary process is far too slow. With the development of culture and technology, the paradigm changed.
In regards to the overall health of our species, there are a number of important indicators that are heading in the wrong direction; population, environment, social and political conflict, etc. I don’t think it’s possible for humanity to be wiped out completely by any one or even two of these going very wrong but, in reality, there would probably be a “cascade effect” from any global disaster.
Something like 40% of the world’s population lives within 60 miles of a coast. Let’s say melting ice from global warming raises sea levels 6 feet. Suddenly, massive flooding world wide has a huge number of people becoming refugees. The shipping and fishing industries become disrupted. Refugees cause tremendous social and political tension as food and water resources are strained to their maximum and beyond. Warfare breaks out, further poisoning the environment and escalating into regional wars that further destroy the environment and food supplies. This presents a golden opportunity for diseases to spread and further decimate an already reeling planet. It’s not unreasonable to believe that billions could die.