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What happened if there's another mass extinction?

Painkillaz

Painkillaz

Well-Known Member
Say if there was another mass extinction like what happened with the dinosaurs...and the climate of the earth and everything stayed the same, and the same survivors of the dinosaur extinction survived the human extinction...if millions of years passed would there be humans again? or would there be some other different dominant species...

any thoughts?
 
Different dominant species. The dinos had the run of the land, and when they died out, the mammals took over. Not saying mammals won't take over again (depends what the extinction level event ends up being), but evolution will take a different course. There were no humans during the time of the dinosaurs, and I don't think they will pop up again.
 
There is a thread above titled 'Random Thoughts' btw.... not that I'm mad at ya or anything.

I don't think what would come along would necessarily be human. It might resemble humans over time. But certainly given enough time intelligent creatures do evolve. It's just part of nature. Some creatures develop wings to fly. Others develop speed to outrun their prey/predators. Others grow huge teeth and muscles to over power other creatures. And still others evolve their brains to out think everyone else. Dolphins are by far the smartest of the sea creatures. And we have taken over the land.

To be clear, we didn't evolve from scratch after the end of the dinosaurs. Mammals had already evolved. So our evolution chain stretches back hundreds of millions of years. So say something hit the earth and totally wiped all life out for a thousand years, and then life started over brand new again. It would probably take another couple hundred million years to devolop a species capable of what we've achieved by way of technology, medicine, aggriculture, space exploration, etc... That's IF it were ever to happen again.

We just so happened to evolve with just the right features to make all of the things we've made possible, possible. Imagine if our entire planet was covered in water. And the only life that was possible had to be able to swim away from preditors like the great white shark to keep from becoming extinct. So dolphins would develop the most complex, and extraordinary brains this planet has ever seen. But no matter how many millions of years we gave dolphins to evolve and progress forward... they'd never make it to the moon. They just don't have the equipment needed to do such a thing.

So in that reguard we are very lucky, and unique because we devoloped our minds, and had the right kinds of appendages to shape things, build things, forge things, manipulate things... if we'd come to that crossroad duing our evolution and had felt the need to be airborn more than earthbound and eventually our arms turned into wings. We would be one wickedly smart species of bird these days. Able to out smart any an all airborn creatures in the sky today. But the limits of having wings instead of arms and hands would have prevented us from doing any of the things we've done over the last few hundred thousand years.

Maybe that's not so much a good thing as it's a sad thing. :(
 
Painkillaz said:
and the same survivors of the dinosaur extinction survived the human extinction
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Thats a pretty big assumption. Don't forget that many species that surived the dinosaurs extinction (and other mass extinctions) have become extinct between then and now. And the ones that are still extanct have been undergoing natural selection/genetic drift/etc. Plus there are plenty of new species around to further disrupt the balance.

Essentially, you could never recreate the evironmental conditions in which humans evolved. Nor can you start off with the same mamal ancestor that produced us. And even if you managed that there's still plenty of random chance involved.

An intelligent species is always possible, given enough time, but you'd never end up with humans again.
 
I saw a documentary years ago that supposed that if the Dinosaurs had not been wiped out then a humanoid reptile would have evolved to fill the space that we occupy.
 
As random as the human is, I seriously doubt it would evolve again or exists on another carbon based world with similar environment. That is not saying there is not plenty of evidence to support a superior species might and most likely would evolve.
It's a matter of the superior surviving. Opposing appendages and intelligence will most likely evolve to rule the roost once again. The chances of it looking human like is extremely unlikely.
 
I am guessing that no one here thinks that a superior being such as God had anything to do with the creation of the universe, including the level of intelligence of humans?
 
damewolf13 said:
I am guessing that no one here thinks that a superior being such as God had anything to do with the creation of the universe, including the level of intelligence of humans?
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Given that the OP's post acknowledged the possibility of the appearance of a new dominant, intelligent species, an event not really supported by most religious beliefs (to my knowledge), it's assumed they were looking for a scientific explanation of this.
 
damewolf13 said:
I am guessing that no one here thinks that a superior being such as God had anything to do with the creation of the universe, including the level of intelligence of humans?
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Well if you mean God as in the Christian God... then nope. According to the Bible, land animals (including dinosaurs) and humans (Adam and Eve) were created on the same day and coexisted... at least that's what I've seen on several Christian websites. That is impossible to believe.
 
There is actually a mass extinction going on right now and has been going on for thousands of years now. The extinction of the golden crested, furry eared titmouse and other similar species doesn't draw a whole lot of attention any more.
 
shawn1224 said:
So we would be Sleestaks?
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Yeah...that's right! :D

sleestaks.jpg
 
Well we certainly lucked out when, whatever it was that took out the dinosaurs gave us our hall pass. When that mass extinction came about, the only land mass mammals that were around were very, very small. They had to be, because the ferocious, extremely efficient reptile hunters would have eaten us alive had we tried to evolve when they roamed the earth.

Very unique set of circumstances indeed. You had hundreds of millions of years of evolution creating extremely dominant creatures on the top of the food chain preventing anything like us ever coming around. Then something took them out, and allowed us to fester and grow. But just think how amazing it is that they were all wiped out, and yet what ever we evolved from was not?

Hard to think of another set of circumstances like that ever coming together again. But, you can never rule anything out completely. After all we're here by chance, so that proves it's possible!
 
Outlaw71 said:
Very unique set of circumstances indeed. You had hundreds of millions of years of evolution creating extremely dominant creatures on the top of the food chain preventing anything like us ever coming around. Then something took them out, and allowed us to fester and grow. But just think how amazing it is that they were all wiped out, and yet what ever we evolved from was not?
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I'll add the disclaimer here that I'm not the best at evolutionary biology, but as I understand it mass extinctions have re-tipped the balance between our ancestors (mammal-like-reptiles) and dinosaurs several times. At one point therapsids, of which mammals are the only living decendants, were actually the dominant land species. Mass extinctions freed up space for the dinosaurs as well as wiping them out, all over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

I'm sure I'm glossing over most of the detail there, but it's still a pretty interesting part of our history.
 
Xyro said:
I'm sure I'm glossing over most of the detail there, but it's still a pretty interesting part of our history.
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What, condensing a few hundred million years into one, short, three sentence paragraph = glossing over a few details?


Nahhhh.




:D
 
Ok so looking back on the OP's question, 'if the same survivors of the dinosaur mass extinction survived the human mass extinction'..... I'll stop it right there because, what ever it was that survived the dinosaur mass extinction, became us. So 'it' couldn't survive a human mass extinction because that would mean that 'it' (being us humans) would be extinct.

Ah ha, this was all a test to see if we could figure out your riddle wasn't it!!!

No seriously though, that's a pretty cool, thought provolking question. I mean I know I've considered the fact many times that we humans will not be the last dominant life form to inhabit this planet before the sun collapses into a super nova 5 billion years from now.... like absolutely no way in hell we make it another 5000 years, let alone 5 billion. But I guess I've never really thought hard about what might happen in the event that we humans all died off, but dogs or cats or taurantulas didn't. What might they become in the 500 million years???

If you take the amount of time it took for the dinosaurs to evolve, 5 billion years leaves enough time for another 6 or 7 completely different life forms to rise from the ashes of the former inhabitors of the earth... enjoy a long, slow evolution of their own... and then die off, leaving this life sustaining miracle planet yet another evolutionary cycle of life.

As I stated before, the conditions have to be just right to let a superior form of intelligent life, like humans, evolve without being wiped out by creatures that are much more fierce, and savage as we ever were. Then on top of that you have to leave the planet alone (no huge meteors slamming into it) long enough to sustain such an evolutionary cycle. By the looks of just about every other planet and moon in our solar system, it seems a miracle that Earth hasn't been pummeled by meteors and/or comets more.

Sure there is evidence in a few places around the globe that some rather large visitors came a knockin a few times in our past. But when you study the other planets, it looks as though they jumped in the way of a shotgun blast or two with all the craters on their surfaces. No doubt we really got lucky in more ways than one. I wonder how long we can keep this lucky streak alive?
 
The Earth will have warm and cold cycles like it has now and always had. And YES this is a bash on the "Global Warming" crap just so as there are no questions :)
 
Outlaw71 said:
What, condensing a few hundred million years into one, short, three sentence paragraph = glossing over a few details?


Nahhhh.




:D
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Pffft. What difference is a few hundred million years here or there? It's not even worth considering IMO.



:D
 
Painkillaz said:
Say if there was another mass extinction like what happened with the dinosaurs...and the climate of the earth and everything stayed the same, and the same survivors of the dinosaur extinction survived the human extinction...if millions of years passed would there be humans again? or would there be some other different dominant species...

any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Wow...

Nice! Very good topic actually!

This is slightly off topic but here goes:

Well if there was a world war and if it became a nuclear war or post apocolyptic world well then all us roach coaches and roach Kings would become the new world leaders!

We would have an awesome time!

Yeah!

I can see it now!

"King" Stinky Stinky!

What a great world that would be! :)

Naah but on a more serious note... apparently there used to be very basic living organisms on the Planet Mars because it was just right to sustain life, and because of this at one point Scientists say that Mars's temperature and other things were very simliar to Earth...

Now please remember that this is not concrete proof but only speculation and they (Scientists) say it might have been possible to have life on Mars at one point in the time of our Solar system.

And also our own planet Earth at one point (I think it is the Archean Period) of X billion years ago or however long ago it was can't remember now but it was not able to support life at one point in time because the sun was either too hot or too cold but I can't remember all the details.

But i do remeber reading that earth could not sustain life due to either too much heat or it was too cold but I have forgotten the details now.

I think the sun was only 75% as bright as it is today in the Archean Period so by that logic it was most probably smaller than it is today and the Earth was a lot cooler or just colder? Hmm but I am not too sure and I can't remember...

Ahhhh! I found some great info!! :)

I was right!

Taken from wikipedia: Sun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theoretical models of the Sun's development suggest that 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago, during the Archean period, the Sun was only about 75% as bright as it is today. Such a weak star would not have been able to sustain liquid water on the Earth's surface, and thus life should not have been able to develop. However, the geological record demonstrates that the Earth has remained at a fairly constant temperature throughout its history, and that the young Earth was somewhat warmer than it is today. The consensus among scientists is that the young Earth's atmosphere contained much larger quantities of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane and/or ammonia) than are present today, which trapped enough heat to compensate for the smaller amount of solar energy reaching the planet.
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I hope this helps clear up your thoughts about this stuff Painkillaz dude.

Keep well and you have a hilarious user name and good thoughts about Geological Eons! :)

Regards

Stinky!
 
TheBrit said:
I saw a documentary years ago that supposed that if the Dinosaurs had not been wiped out then a humanoid reptile would have evolved to fill the space that we occupy.
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Just saw this post and it reminded me of a Star Trek Voyager episode where that actually happened.
 
I read that cockroaches have a good chance of surviving.

They can live a month without food, go without air for 45 minutes, live submerged under water for 30 minutes. and can live on limited resources like the glue on the back of postage stamps.

And they are 6-15 times as radiation resistant as humans.
 
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