What if that Asteroid missed the Earth
Hello Homo sapiens, Probably you may be wondering that, what is the purpose of life. Don't worry you are not alone to ask this question. Today, Out Of Curiosity I'll provide you the most accurate answer for one of the biggest question that is: What if that Asteroid missed the Earth 66 Million years ago.
Well, first you wouldn't be reading this article at this moment or may be this article never existed. Yes, you guessed it right. No Humans would have existed.
Life on Earth would be still dinosauric in all likelihood, of course assuming that no other such catastrophic event occurs. After all, dinos had a good long run of dominance on land for 160 million years prior, and if that continued, primates like us would not be around, said Damian Nance, a professor of geosciences at Ohio University. Mammals did co-evolve alongside dinosaurs, but they occupied fringe ecological niches and grew no larger than rodents in most cases.
It's important to note before we get into more details that there's no causal evidence here. One of the leading theories for the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs is that there was (at least one) massive impact event that caused a series of catastrophic outcomes that devastated the largest flora and fauna. But it happened 66 million years ago. The Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico has been dated to that same era, so the timelines match up, but it's just still situational data. And the impact theory isn't the only one out there. Paleontologists don't all agree that the Chicxulub crater is responsible for the mass extinction, though the data does strongly support the impact theory.
On the other hand, assuming dinosaurs had survived, what factors might have shaped their evolution? Climate change might have perhaps been the first big hurdle. An event known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago, saw average global temperatures reach 8C hotter than today, and rain forests spanning much of the planet.
In this hothouse world with abundant vegetation perhaps many long-necked sauropods might have grown more rapidly, breeding at a younger age and shrinking in size; several ‘dwarf’ sauropods (some little bigger than a cow) were already known from European islands in the late Cretaceous. The largest titanosaurs of mid-Cretaceous South America – 40m-long (131ft) creatures heavier than two jet aircraft – were already long gone.
“If plant evolution continued as it has in our modern world, the herbivorous dinosaurs would almost certainly have had a diet primarily of flowering plants,” notes Matt Bonnan a palaeontologist at Stockton University in New Jersey. “Given that they are somewhat easier to digest, perhaps we would have seen an overall decrease in body size… the gigantic sizes of Mesozoic dinosaurs might have disappeared.”
Along with flowering plants came fruit, which co-evolved with mammals and birds to help plants disperse seeds. Might monkey-like dinosaurs have evolved to take advantage of this resource, just as primates did in our timeline? “Many birds eat fruit. So, there may also have been non-bird dinosaurs adapted to a frugivorous diet,” says Bonnan.
Done, Hopefully you enjoyed! reading.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/21/what-if-dinosaurs-were-still-alive-google
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170918-what-if-the-dinosaurs-hadnt-died-out
https://www.popsci.com/dinosaur-asteroid-late
https://www.livescience.com/33275-what-if-asteroid-wiped-out-kill-dinosaurs-extinct.html
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| Source: Google Images |
If that meteor had come just half a minute later, it would have hit somewhere in either the Atlantic or Pacific. Either location would have made some killer waves (literally), but at least it wouldn’t have killed as many dinos. Birds are cool and all, it just might have been nice to have some little raptors running around instead of chickens. They were about the same size anyway, so they couldn’t reach the doorknobs if we put them a little higher. These new findings came to light in a BBC documentary, The Day the Dinosaurs Died, featuring the scientists who have been drilling into the underwater crater. Back in 2016, geophysicists Jo Morgan from Imperial College London and Sean Gulick from the University of Texas drilled deep into the ocean floor to figure out more about the impact. They've been analyzing the samples they brought back ever since. The Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March 2017 featured multiple presentations from the team, but surprisingly the news didn't really spread until their findings hit mainstream TV.
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| Source: Google Images |
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| Source: Google Images |
It's important to note before we get into more details that there's no causal evidence here. One of the leading theories for the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs is that there was (at least one) massive impact event that caused a series of catastrophic outcomes that devastated the largest flora and fauna. But it happened 66 million years ago. The Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico has been dated to that same era, so the timelines match up, but it's just still situational data. And the impact theory isn't the only one out there. Paleontologists don't all agree that the Chicxulub crater is responsible for the mass extinction, though the data does strongly support the impact theory.
On the other hand, assuming dinosaurs had survived, what factors might have shaped their evolution? Climate change might have perhaps been the first big hurdle. An event known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago, saw average global temperatures reach 8C hotter than today, and rain forests spanning much of the planet.
In this hothouse world with abundant vegetation perhaps many long-necked sauropods might have grown more rapidly, breeding at a younger age and shrinking in size; several ‘dwarf’ sauropods (some little bigger than a cow) were already known from European islands in the late Cretaceous. The largest titanosaurs of mid-Cretaceous South America – 40m-long (131ft) creatures heavier than two jet aircraft – were already long gone.
“If plant evolution continued as it has in our modern world, the herbivorous dinosaurs would almost certainly have had a diet primarily of flowering plants,” notes Matt Bonnan a palaeontologist at Stockton University in New Jersey. “Given that they are somewhat easier to digest, perhaps we would have seen an overall decrease in body size… the gigantic sizes of Mesozoic dinosaurs might have disappeared.”
Along with flowering plants came fruit, which co-evolved with mammals and birds to help plants disperse seeds. Might monkey-like dinosaurs have evolved to take advantage of this resource, just as primates did in our timeline? “Many birds eat fruit. So, there may also have been non-bird dinosaurs adapted to a frugivorous diet,” says Bonnan.
In the present day in this alternative timeline, perhaps a few species of large herbivorous sauropods, and even carnivores similar to T. rex, might hang on in protected wildernesses and national parks vast enough to fit their home ranges. They would have to be truly vast wildernesses though, with little human development, in places like outback Australia and Alaska. Maybe some of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs would have adapted to urban environments, thriving alongside people in the cities, as pigeons, rats and seagulls have in our world.
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| Source: Google Images |
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/21/what-if-dinosaurs-were-still-alive-google
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170918-what-if-the-dinosaurs-hadnt-died-out
https://www.popsci.com/dinosaur-asteroid-late
https://www.livescience.com/33275-what-if-asteroid-wiped-out-kill-dinosaurs-extinct.html
As Always, thanks for reading ;)
#Stay Curious.
Interesting!
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