"WHAT IF: There Had Been No KT Asteroid?" Topic

What if this had not happened 65 million years ago:

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How would evolution have continued? What direction(s) would it have taken? What would be living on this planet today? Were mammals destined to rule, no matter what?

CC
TMP link

Well, then something else would have come along. Acually, there are many theories of Dino extinction that don't require the drama of a comet strike. Dinosaurs had a very good run. We (mammals) should be so lucky to last as long. I think it all depends of the how the climate might have changed, and what new niches opened up for exploitaion. I have a hunch that Cephalopods might have prevailed in a warm shallow sea world. I'd like to think then weird-looking pirate guys might have heads like the one in POFC. I can imagine squids in space, too. Hmmm, where did I put those mind-flayer figs?

Were mammals destined to rule, no matter what?

Nope. We're here completely by luck of the draw, regardless of what some people may think. Not just because of the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction, but also because of many others before that which eventually led to the current situation.

You might remember sometime in the 80s or early 90s, there was a hypothetical rendering of an intelligent bipedal dinosaur/reptile that might have evolved. I believe they even made a full scale model of it.

The earth would be ruled by these guys:

picture

and we'd be just a bunch of:

picture

Acually, there are many theories of Dino extinction that don't require the drama of a comet strike.

AFAIK, most paleontologists and geologists are pretty comfortable with the Yuccatan impact zone as being the cause of the K/T mass extinction.

There are many mass extinctions for which there is overwhelming fossil and geological evidence. Where there is debate and investigation now is whether the fashionable extraterrestrial collisions were the cause of all or if indeed there were other causes. Some pretty convincing arguments have been made for climate change (possibly caused by continents' configuration and position, re plate tectonics), massive releases of CO2 and other stuff.

Tim,

Is any of these the fella you are thinking of?
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link

CC

Ahh, yes, I remember that model, Tim, it was shown very predominately in an old special on dinosaurs called, IIRC, "Dinosaurs!". Pretty cool special, it had a pretty neat rendering of what a fight between a T-Rex and a triceratops would have looked like done in old school stop motion animation. I remember watching it dozens of times as a kid, and that model stuck out to me. As a kid, I remember it creeping me out pretty bad, to the point of actually having nightmares once from it.

Back on topic, though, I've gotta agree with everyone else so far: something would have come along. With all the various creatures existing at the time, I'd have to say the chances of humans coming out on top probably would have been pretty slim. It's pretty well accepted that dinos were getting smaller and cleverer towards the end of their run, making them a pretty good choice. Of course, no one can really tell what kind of effect that meteor strike could have had on the intellectual evolution of the animals at that time. One might postulate that without a global cataclysm such as the KT Asteroid, it might have been possible for rodents, felines or any one of a couple dozen of other creatures to eventually evolve to dominate, becoming this hypothetical reality's equivalent of humans.

The first one's the one I'm thinking of CC. Thanks for giving me the heebie jeebies.

Unless I'm totally mistaken, the special I mentioned is this:

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with info about it at imdb.com here:

imdb.com/title/tt0439543

I just found these other pics:

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CC

Just saying that there are "other thoughts" than just the KT, Tim. I realise this is an "accepted" demarcation line. Were dinosaurs on the edge already, and the comet just snuffs out the last? Don't think this is a slam-dunk just yet. There are many problems of why this event singled out a very adaptable creature, and not others. Warm-blooded and covered in feathers, Dinosaurs had expanded to regions that would have seen limited light, if not full arctic dark winters. This hints at other causes that were in play. Hibernation might have been a mammal strategy that the Dinos just didn't have in their tool-kit. Of course, birds are possibly the desendent of the adapted Dinosaur and we could be not dealing with an extinction as much as a culling of a changing species.

Here is a side view of the Dale Russell model:

picture

However, I would prefer to imagine it in clothing like this, but made out of thick dinosaur skin:

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picture

Now, wouldn't that be nice in 28mm?

CC

Miiiickeey Mouuse?

=)

Sorry… just had to.

So, we'd end up with a smooth skinned crossbreed of a Sleestak and a Klingon? Sounds awesome. Heck, that sounds like a mini conversion that's just gotta happen now.

The mass extinctions of the K-T impact actualy began several million years before the impact, it seems that environmental conditions, by which i mean both temprature, weather and so on as well as the meergence of new dominant species altering the ecoweb, had been changin for a while. It seems there were a few hammerblows that fell together, the Yuctan impact, large scale volcanic flood eruptions and there is some new evidence of a massive outgassing of CO2 and methane, held in permafrost and lakebeds.

In addition, there was also a mini-mass extinction at the end of the eocene and, according to some scientists, we are creating one of our own right now.

G.

If the asteroid, climate or whatever had not killed off the dinosaurs, what would have evolved to our level, a reptile or a mammal or insect or something else?

Insects might have had problems getting to our level. Fire doesn't scale very well; there's sort of a minimum size at which it's hot enough to be useful.

Insects can't get very big; there are some very big spiders, but they're all legs and not much else. The issue is the way they breathe; they pump air through their bodies rather than having lungs and dissolving air into a bloodstream which limits their bodysizes.

Smaller creatures would have trouble getting big enough fires to develop technology.

Sea animals are always going to have problems associated with their environment; firstly they can't make fire underwater. Secondly a lot of them aren't spectacularly good at leaving the water. Octopus would make a good species otherwise; they get big, have good eyes, inquisitive, arms to manipulate things but their structure relies on being in the water. When they leave it they become floppy blobs. Squid and cuttlefish have the same issue.

While in the water they've no reason to evolve skeletons (they're quite successful as they are), so it would take some extraordinary pressure to evolve them just to move onto land.

{Of course, having said that, dolphins found it necessary to move back to the water. So it's not infeasible}

I think reptiles would be the best bet. They were starting to get very large brains and possibly complex social behaviours. You probably wouldn't want to be hunted by some of them. There's no real reason why they couldn't have evolved upright walking, freeing the arms for manipulation and produced human analogues.

Why is another matter.

We don't quite know why we evolved; why we stopped being tree-climbing apes and started being walking-around-picking-things-up apes. It's possible that was a completely accidental thing which wouldn't have been replicated in the reptile world.

link

very very scary and sobering stuff

One set of good speculation: link

"species" link is broken but you can get to them in a roundabout way through the other pages.

Also hunt down 'The new dinosaurs' by Dougal Dixon. More speculative evolution then you can shake a stick at.

-Will

Doc,

Very, very impressive. I think the video portrays a small moon, from the looks of it.

CC

Not a big fan of the "KT" theory. How did the massive asteroid hit kill off ONLY the dinosaurs? How did turtles and Crocs survive? Much less all of the other small mammals and what not? Besides I am a firm believer in the Electrical universe and know that the KT crater was caused by large scale electrical interaction between the Earth and another planatary body. Electrical Machining creates the crater and without the large scale fall out and "nuclear winter" that a comet impact would have.

KatieL covered all the bases for a single species advance to technological control of the planet. There is the possibility of some kind of symbiosis of two creatures. Only one would have to develop big brains while the other could do the other bidding while out of its element.

I will point out that the dinosaurs dominated the planet for far more years than humans have, yet apparently never developed human levels of intelligence. Mammals, on the other hand, have had a far shorter run, yet rose to intelligence much more quickly. This could suggest that only mammalian physiology is capable of developing intelligence at a higher level than pack predators; that is, dinosaurs never developed human intelligence because they couldn't develop it.

Why us and not them? Don't know. But it is worthy to note that of all creatures on this planet (and some have been here far longer than us) only mammals have developed significant levels of intelligence. No other class of animal has anything near the level of intelligence of even a pig. Why not? As others have pointed out, crocs, turtles, sharks, squids, birds, etc., etc., have all been here as long as mammals (and some longer). They've all had the same amount of time, undergone the same geological and climatic changes, and yet they all remain at rudimentary levels of intelligence. Maybe it's because they simply can't rise above it. Ever. It just may be that to be smart, you have to be a mammal.

Thanks for the images of the 'Dinosaurid'…I think that would be a GREAT mini…especially with the other dino as his 'pet/companion'/ride?

Also, I LOVED that movie, 'Enemy Mine'…and it was was and is a 'classic' about what 'intelligence' and 'soul' (no matter what the 'outside' looks like…

Very cool indeed…I gotta see if it can be done!

Carpe' Reptilliaus,
Sgt DWW

Parzival said [But it is worthy to note that of all creatures on this planet (and some have been here far longer than us) only mammals have developed significant levels of intelligence. No other class of animal has anything near the level of intelligence of even a pig. ]

Uh, no. Lots of birds score far higher on the smarts than lots of mammals. Parrots and crows are up there with the rats, pigs and monkeys. Octopuses outdo lab rats in certain kinds of intelligence test, but octopuses can't do cultural learning (mum teaches baby something she's learned) because they drop dead when their eggs hatch.

GRENADIER1 said [Not a big fan of the "KT" theory. How did the massive asteroid hit kill off ONLY the dinosaurs?]

It didn't kill only dinosaurs. It wiped out all sorts of things from ammonites to plants to mammals. About 75% of all species perished. It's just that the dinosaurs and ammonites did worse than "average" (100% gone) while the crocodiles and mammals did average (75% gone) or better than average. There has never been any suggestion by palaontologists that any group got through completely unscathed.

My copy of The Fossil Record 2 has 5 mammal families becoming extinct at the K/T boundary. A family is a big grouping – modern mammal families include the Cats, modern plant family includes the Grasses, which contains every cereal crop, several trees, and sugar cane, as well as all the species in your lawn or your pasture.

Cacique – Harry Harrison's West of Eden trilogy features a world with no K/T extinction. Intelligent reptiles evolved from mosasaurs battle with intelligent "humans" evolved from South American monkeys.

One scary thought is that maybe dinosaurs or some other animal type did develop high intelligence with led to them to ruling the planet for a short time. Then they went to war and destroyed themselves. They could of done it in a similar short time-frame as modern humans. In the time scale of a blip. So small we haven't found their fossil record yet.

TMP link

So close, so close…
Get them out of those skirts and into some trousers…

ERMM thats not my post??

What I posted was that Harry Harrison did acouple of books called "… of Eden' in which some dinos had developed into primitive type people and were using other dinos as cattle, transport an interesting read.

Stronty girl
Thats what I ment by "ONLY dinosaurs" =Killed off completly
I ment species that were dominate and flourished were the ones who were completly wiped out. I feel it was much more related to climate change in conjunction with Astornomical events. The Sun is an active electrical Glow discharge and the universe is awash in charges Plasma. Modern scientist ignor or dismiss the idea of an electrically charged universe and thus planets are fixed in their current positions. However our ancestors spoke of Venus and other planets as moving objects. The Electrical universe is active and in motion. Planetary bodies have shifted orbits in the past and this shift maybe of Mars into an orbit closer to Earth would have brought the Planet into the Earths electrical field. Catastrophic events would have happened as well as massive climate shifts. Electrical discharges would have arced between the planets carving out features we could easily mistake for an impact event. This would have not resulted in the freezing Nuclear winter that would have killed off some of the species that survived the so called KT impact. In fact the planet would have been more than likely heated up and even had gravitational changes that may have impacted the larger dinosaurs.

For more info see Thunderbolts.info

I am not doing the whole theory justice in such a short post but it is the result of some painstaking work by Plasma Physicist and not the ravings of the black helo crowd.

Art – hope I didn't come across as a snotty know-it-all – Actually, I know I did, so sorry. I've just been reading a lot of earth science lately and when I was in Kindergarten in the 60s (long before dinosaurs became a really big parent child thing as it did in the late 80s) when asked with all my friends what we wanted to be when we grew up I would see very puzzled looks from adults when I told them "a paleontologist" – my career track got knocked off kilter when a recruiter came to school for Royal MIlitary College and I never really got back on, properly!

And Stronty, if birds are so smart, how come my grey won't talk for me, but babbles his head off in my voice to my wife all the time!!!!

Actually, it's amazing to watch birds, crows, especially. These guys are far from the "bird brain" stereotype one hears all the time!

Modern scientist ignor or dismiss the idea of an electrically charged universe and thus planets are fixed in their current positions.

I don't think so. A Mr Croll from Scotland (can't remember first name) first suggested earth's climate was greatly affected by the changing of its orbit. He presented his ideas in the mid to late 1800s and a Serbian mathematician (forget his name completely) refined it further in the early 20th centrury. It's a pretty widely accepted view that the cycles of changing attitudes, ie, the position, of the earth and planets has a great deal to do with climate change.

Grenadier, I'll have to visit the site, your presentation of their ideas seems to have missed some of the salient points, making it sound a little like Raelian "science".

Er….I didn't post the two above posts…it should have been the following:

Howdy,
I'm in the Tacoma, WA area…there are a few of us BFWWII players scattered around the Puget Sound…some north of Seattle, some over in Bremerton…a couple of us near Tacoma though we've kind of let it go to the wayside because of the lack of local players and the majority of people playing FoW.

I've read the basic rules and only played FoW a couple of times and both times I was turned off by the lack of WWII "reality" or tactics…now…it may have just been the games I played in??? Eventually i'll try it again…

But Battlefront sure has the right tactical feel and is honestly pretty simple once you get a grasp of the sequence etc…
BFWWII also has alot of online support at their website…

I would gladly play BFWWII anytime…at the moment i've decided to start over with my WWII and sold most of my painted WWII minis and i'm focused building other periods and armies but I will play! :)

I've also been eyeing "I aint been shot mum" by Too Fat Lardies…company level rules in which you can use FoW basing and it seems to feel more tactically right…

Anyhoo…thats my rant.. :P :)

Adrian

ARRRGH! I've been bugged by TMP!

Let me try again:

I just skimmed through thunderbolts.info/home.htm

There are some very interesting thoughts and explanations profferred there, I must say.

However, I was disturbed at the continual sniping at what they seem to consider "wrong on the most fundamental questions". It furrowed my brow and struck me as similar to the sort of prose used by UFO sites that decry what they might think as dismissal of their ideas.

The article writers seem to be mainly two gentleman, Mr. Thornhill and Mr.Talbot. The former is one of these "comparative mythologist" (see my comments following), the latter is decribed as a "physcist", but I note there is no "Dr", nor any list of publications (his web site link is dead).

I also see no evidence of peer reviewed articles by others in this "field".

In looking further at "the team", I noted the descriptions of people's careers. The term "premier comparative mythologist" (whatever that is) describes the careers of three of the team. A couple were "trained in university astronomy". One is a retired electrical engineer, again, lacking the distinction of "dr" which would have indicated a career devoted to research and nothing to indicate any expertize/research/training in cosmology or astronomy (as a professional engineer myself, I can assure you this is significant with respect to the picture the authors of the site wish to portray of their "team").

The lack of depth in any hard science background, and the tone of the abstracts and articles which seems to resent anyone with the associated background one would need to make these theories more credible makes this site look like just another site similar to "Why Elvis is Alive"/"Hitler Clones in Brazil"/etc, sorry.

IIRC large parts of North America and the Indian subcontinent were nothing more than huge volcanic areas, maybe not whole seas of lava, but something quite close.

Dinosaurs found it hard to survive in such a world. Eggs had trouble maturing as the highly acid content of the water and air would make them brittle.

And then the Yucatan strike, hitting perhaps the worst possible spot on the planet. It would have been bad anywhere else, but Yucatan was the perfect mix of conditions for a nuclear winter.

Dinosaurs did not die out with a bang. Their end still took a few million years, but other species, like mammals got a foot in the door and did pretty well. Their rapid expansion helped seal the fate of the dinosaurs. One group of dino's did survive and thrived, we call them birds.

Even without the KT-strike it's clear Dinosaurs were on the way out as the dominant form of life. They may not have gone extinct, but their numbers would have been seriously reduced.

As for intelligence, it's a big hurdle to take. If you want human-level intelligence, you need a huge intake of proteins and lots of energy, which is usually better used to power muscles.

So you need a species that has access to a rich food source, but if it has enough food, it may not need to get smart in the first place. Humans became smart because they had a solid noggin' base to start off. When living conditions dramatically changed, they turned their brain into a survival tool. Evolution is a box of chocolates, you never quite know what you will get in the end.

Mobius: "One scary thought is that maybe dinosaurs or some other animal type did develop high intelligence with led to them to ruling the planet for a short time. Then they went to war and destroyed themselves. They could of done it in a similar short time-frame as modern humans. In the time scale of a blip. So small we haven't found their fossil record yet."

Wasn't that the premise for a Star Trek Voyager episode ("Distant Origin" about a race called the "Voth"?

stvoy.epguides.info/?ID=500
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The "Voth" must have colonized deep space before Earth bought it with the KT asteroid or whatever, and then lost contact with their homeworld!

CC

What if the Voth came back to reclaim the planet!!!!!!

Now, THAT would be exciting gaming material.

CC

Turtles and gators survived because they have a very slow metabolism. They can go without food for a long time and are not very particular about what they eat.

Dinosaurs were much better because they had a faster metabolism, but when the going gets tough they died of hunger when the average gator was still trying to digest all those carcasses he had last year when the big ball of fire came from the sky …

Pics of the Voth and their big-o-ship:
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A not-too-favorable review here:
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CC
Imagine a Second Coming of the Voth!!!

Voth ships and their city-ships (try saying that 5 times in a row):
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CC

@GRENADIER1- interesting theory, but how does it explain the large layer of extremely concentrated Iruidium that occurs on the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundry in the earth's sediment? The website Tim Marshall found seems not to address this at all. Also, as other's have said, it wasn't only the dinosaurs that suffered- many, many other groups of species met thier end as well.

-Will

@GRENADIER1- interesting theory, but how does it explain the large layer of extremely concentrated Iruidium that occurs on the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundry in the earth's sediment? The website Tim Marshall found seems not to address this at all. Also, as other's have said, it wasn't only the dinosaurs that suffered- many, many other groups of species met thier end as well.

Quick edit- ok, I read that site more throughly- they also claim most of Earth's major features were carved by electricity! And that's just the start of thier claims. I'm sorry, those guys sound like quacks.

-Will

whoops, double post!

Like the Voth idea- hard to rule out in an absolute sense, since I suspect there are many species that we simply haven't found yet (and maybe never will).

-Will

It's also worth remembering that our greatest fossil record comes from the sea, since it has good conditions for preserving remains, so our knowledge is naturally bised towards aquatic creatures. Also, many of the fossils we do have from land creatures represent an entire species with just one or two incomplete specemins. The land extinctions may well have been much higher than the 75% commonly quoted, simply because there were many species that were extinguished that we may never know about.

G.

Dinosaurs did not die out with a bang. Their end still took a few million years

IIRC that's either still a hotly debated topic or they've settled on a relatively abrubt end at the K/T boundary.

I think where the above might be right though is the fossil record shows dinosaurs were in decline anyway. POssibly climatic changes or other theories, but the big kaboom did end the Mesozoic pretty quickly.

"but the big kaboom did end the Mesozoic pretty quickly"

Can I use that, "the big kaboom"? I like it. :)

CC

[quote Cacique Caribe]
What if the Voth came back to reclaim the planet!!!!!!

Now, THAT would be exciting gaming material.
[/quote]

Conspiracy X handles that, for the roleplayers, although the Voth are called Saurians in CX.

Nice pics of the Voth:

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CC

Me like the Voth. Who makes something like them for 28mm?

Tim and Wminsing. Mr Talbot and Mr Thornhill are not the source of the Electrical theory of the universe it is of growing acceptence among plasma phyisicst. Please give it a more than casual read It has taken me several months to go through their ideas and the links offered on their page. I agree Tim their presentation is rather dismissive of mainstream astronomy but this is the result of I think continued frustration with the mainstream community and its boxed thinking. After you are familiar with the site and their theory read a few articles from SPACE.com and see what they are talking about. Every time I read of a new discovery in space I keep reading "we were surprised…" "we didnt expect…" " this is not what we thought we would see…". The Thunderbolts group has recently revamped their site so some of the info may not be available but their index gives a very compeling argument that predicts and explains the discoveries in electrical terms. I am an electronic technician by background and I am also a certified welder so electrical and plasma activity are common ground for me. I easily relate to the ideas from their site. But they back it up with data from Halton Arp and other more well known members from the fields.

The answer to the original question hinges on other questions. Did the KT strike cause the end of the "long, hot summer" that was the Age of Dinosaurs, or was that going to end on its own regardless?

If the ice was going to march, then the saurian megafauna was doomed. The little guys who could migrate more readily or had better body temperature regulation were more prone to adapt, and did. The children of the Velociraptor are still with us, as anyone who has ever watched a snake try to cross a chicken yard will tell you…