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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 2, 2016 4:32:03 GMT 5
I wondered about this for a few days now. You're probably aware of scenarios wondering about what things would be like if the K-Pg extinction event never occurred. People tend to imagine what things would be like in the present day and they typically conclude that dinosaurs would still be the dominant terrestrial vertebrates at that point.
But if that's the case, how much longer do you think they would hold that position? Alternatively, if you don't believe that they'd still be the dominant terrestrial vertebrates by the Holocene, explain.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 3, 2016 1:15:01 GMT 5
Anyone interested? I would personally assume that with no K-Pg event, the dinosaurs should be able to hold their title as the most dominant terrestrial vertebrates until the next mass extinction-inducing environmental disaster occurs. Whenever that would happen.
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Post by creature386 on Oct 3, 2016 2:15:26 GMT 5
It is hard to tell when the next mass extinctions would have happened, since the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum was probably a late after-effect of the K-Pg extinction event. Considering the statistical frequency of Big Five mass extinction events, I guess they would have ruled until about 100-150 million years after the missed K-Pg event.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2016 15:16:50 GMT 5
I don't know, they're pretty abundant today with the KT event...
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Post by Ceratodromeus on Oct 4, 2016 6:12:40 GMT 5
i mean its pretty apparent he was talking about non avian dinosaurs.
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Post by creature386 on Oct 4, 2016 13:44:47 GMT 5
He was talking about ruling, not existing.
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gigadino96
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Post by gigadino96 on Oct 5, 2016 1:30:15 GMT 5
I doubt they would still rule the Earth. I mean, Andrea Cau recently stated in a Radio interview that dinosaurs were already going through a big crisis when the K-Pg event occured. Non-avian dinosaurs' decline would have been slower, but their final excintion would have happened anyway.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 5, 2016 3:07:43 GMT 5
Was this on the same basis as the study you recently brought up in the news thread?
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Post by Venomous Dragon on Oct 5, 2016 5:00:29 GMT 5
Answer depends on what you classify as a dinosaur.
Realisticly it's utterly impossible to tell but I wouldn't be surprised if they remained top.
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gigadino96
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Post by gigadino96 on Oct 5, 2016 16:36:51 GMT 5
Was this on the same basis as the study you recently brought up in the news thread? Sorry, I was completely mistakening. Cau stated the exact opposite - the dinosaurs weren't in decline back 66 milion years ago according to him. He also stated that dinosaurs would still rule the Earth with the K-Pg event missing. This is the interview I'm referring to: www.radio3.rai.it/dl/portaleRadio/media/ContentItem-f6b61289-36f0-4956-a28a-d8a38f8976b1.html(Note: it's in Italian) I still think the next mass excintion would have easily whiped them out, even though, as creature correctly remarked, it's difficult to tell when this would have happened. |
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Post by creature386 on Oct 6, 2016 2:15:01 GMT 5
IRRC, Nicholas Longrich said that the birds we have today only descended from a handful of species that made it past the K-Pg boundary (Wikipedia said the same, citing this paper: www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7574/full/nature15697.html ) which makes me wonder whether birds were more mass extinction proof than their cousins or whether they were merely lucky. In case the latter is true, we probably don't even need to differentiate between avian and non-avian dinosaurs, since there is no guarantee whether another alternative mass extinction may not kill birds as well (and possibly exempt other dinosaur lineages?). |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 6, 2016 3:56:13 GMT 5
Well, my guess is that members of Neornithes would have been more adapted to survive the K-Pg mass extinction than other dinosaurs due to a) smaller size (obvious benefits) and b) possession of toothless beaks optimized for the consumption of seeds (explanation here). Obviously though, that doesn't guarantee that one particular taxon will survive. So I'd say that among dinosaurs as a whole, birds (particularly Neornithes) were in fact more "mass extinction proof" than all the others, but among birds, those that survived were just lucky. If that makes sense. |
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Post by creature386 on Oct 6, 2016 13:10:20 GMT 5
Yeah, that probably makes sense. I have to admit that if it was mere luck, the three lineages that survived the K-Pg event wouldn't all have been bird lineages (after all, its not as if the all the birds today were descended from only one lucky survivor species).
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Post by Life on Oct 10, 2016 23:08:32 GMT 5
IMO, they would have continued to dominate.
Modern life-forms might also have developed differently under their shadow.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Jul 8, 2019 21:27:12 GMT 5
I agree with Life. Despite the decline at the end of the Cretaceous, they could bounce back
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