If there'd been no K-T Asteroid Strike - What Would Have Happened?

[SLD]

I'm curious to speculate whether an intelligent species of Dinosaurs would have arisen, and if so, where, and whether they would have been able to dominate all of the continents eventually.

At the time of the K-T asteroid, T-Rex was the undisputed predator in North America. But he didn't rule everywhere. I think it's been pretty much debunked that Dinosaurs were already on their way out by the time of the K-T strike. So I would presume they would continue evolving. Would T-Rex and it's food sources continued an evolutionary arms race? Both getting bigger and bigger?

But would one of them evolved more intelligence and could that have made a difference? T-Rex's brain to body ratio, from what I read, could put it on the scale of Chimpanzee intelligence. But I'm not sure about their brain structure. Could they have evolved an even greater intelligence? And if so, how would that have changed them? Or is there simply no such evolutionary pressure on them because they're at the top of the food chain regardless? Could other predators evolve intelligence just in order to compete with T-Rex for food sources. Humans evolved with predators around them, but those predators weren't substantially larger than them. They could at least fend off attacks without modern weaponry.

Europe was mainly a series of Islands and the Dinosaurs were significantly smaller. Maybe it might have been easier for an intelligent species to arise their without the competition from a huge predator like T-Rex, or the other predators that were in South America, or other places.

I don't see the K-T asteroid as inevitable. It easily could have missed and plunged into the sun or some other body. From another article I read, there had been some collision in the asteroid belt about 100 million years before the strike.

 

[Politesse]

I'm curious to speculate whether an intelligent species of Dinosaurs would have arisen, and if so, where, and whether they would have been able to dominate all of the continents eventually.

At the time of the K-T asteroid, T-Rex was the undisputed predator in North America. But he didn't rule everywhere. I think it's been pretty much debunked that Dinosaurs were already on their way out by the time of the K-T strike. So I would presume they would continue evolving. Would T-Rex and it's food sources continued an evolutionary arms race? Both getting bigger and bigger?

But would one of them evolved more intelligence and could that have made a difference? T-Rex's brain to body ratio, from what I read, could put it on the scale of Chimpanzee intelligence. But I'm not sure about their brain structure. Could they have evolved an even greater intelligence? And if so, how would that have changed them? Or is there simply no such evolutionary pressure on them because they're at the top of the food chain regardless? Could other predators evolve intelligence just in order to compete with T-Rex for food sources. Humans evolved with predators around them, but those predators weren't substantially larger than them. They could at least fend off attacks without modern weaponry.

Europe was mainly a series of Islands and the Dinosaurs were significantly smaller. Maybe it might have been easier for an intelligent species to arise their without the competition from a huge predator like T-Rex, or the other predators that were in South America, or other places.

I don't see the K-T asteroid as inevitable. It easily could have missed and plunged into the sun or some other body. From another article I read, there had been some collision in the asteroid belt about 100 million years before the strike.

How do you define "intelligence"? Some dinosaurid species are already considered to have been possibly quite intelligent, though bone remains give us very little to go on as far as precisely describing cognitive structure. But if you mean capable of creating a language-using, tool-bearing culture, I think we know far too little about our own development to specualte accurately about this hypothetical.

 

[Politesse]

By the way, "T-Rex was the undisputed predator in North America" is a somewhat disputable claim! I'm a tyrannosaur fan, and certainly ascribe to the camp which sees her as an apex ambush predator. However, many do still disagree, and though the hypothesis that the tyrannosaurs were primarily scavengers is currently a minority position in the field, all it would take to change that is the discovery of a single site or the disclosure of previously unnoticed evidence in the collections we have. Certainly, there were other fearsome predators in the Cretaceous, if none so physically large.

I also don't think predation and intelligence are necessarily correlated. Habitual omnivores have to be clever, too, maybe more so. We trade ease of life for flexibility, a successful bargain over the long term but one which requires an organism to "think on their feet", rather more so than an animal which can derive all of its nutrition by eating a small assortment of instinctive prey.

Likewise, size is not necessarily a factor. Humans themselves are hardly the largest savannah creatures, and many of the other contenders for most intelligent species are quite diminuitive even in comparison to us. Cephalapods, corvids, and so forth. If anything, a VERY large body is going to have energy needs that are apt to draw resources away from the optimal function of the nervous system. Notice how much physically slimmer the hominids are compared to our closest primate cousins.

 

[rousseau]

The distinctive features of homo sapiens isn't just our cognition, but also a number of other traits that have likely evolved with a synergistic effect on each other. So if your basis for 'intelligence' is their being 'like humans' then the answer is no. Humans and dinosaurs would have shared an earlier ancestor, so to get human-like abilities requires that earlier precursor.

Beyond that it's hard to say what would have happened sans extinction event. Birth vs Egg Laying represents a major difference in life way, so likely mammals would have flourished eventually and that's how we'd get an intellectual/social species.

 

[Valjean]

Human-type intelligence is metabolically expensive and largely unnecessary. What selective advantage does it afford in an already successful species?

Without free arms and dexterous hands, tool and fire making and usage would be pretty rudimentary. Without cooking to augment the nutritional value of foods, effective hunting weapons and gathering tools, intelligence would likely be an expensive and useless handicap.

Humans are a fluke. Life existed for a long time before we came along, and our cleverness seems poised to crash the ecosystem and initiate a sixth extinction.

Some of the dinos that did survive, the parrots and corvids, are pretty clever, but have never managed to achieve our level of technology, even after 65M years.

 

[skepticalbip]

... snip ...

Some of the dinos that did survive, the parrots and corvids, are pretty clever, but have never managed to achieve our level of technology, even after 65M years.

Intelligence and technology are not synonyms. Human intelligence just happened to express itself in technological advances because humans needed it to flourish with no fangs, claws, speed, strength, etc.

 

[rousseau]

I think one of the key questions is what would cause the ability of humans to emerge. Probably this begins long before our species existed, and starts with increased parental investment and a heightened social complexity in the family unit.

In our specific lineage, eventually metabolic activity shifted from brute strength to increased cognitive ability. I'd argue that intelligence isn't critical here, but rather social intelligence which is broader in scope. In humans, cognitive ability became a key factor in sexual selection, which led to even more social and technical complexity.

So did Reptiles ever invest extensively in their young? It seems to me that the Reptile strategy is to have as many young as possible, with quick development times. This likely precludes the social pressure necessary for cognitive ability to emerge, that is unless Mammals arise (which they did).

 

[steve_bank]

Strip away the water and soil and the Earth looks a bit like the moon , cratered.

That humans emerged is the result of a long chain of events going back to the creation of an oxygen atmosphere.

A lot of things had to line up.

Maybe one of our distant ancestors went left instead of right avoiding being a snack for T Rex.

TR going to the moon would seem unlikely by evolving.

Evolution requires selection and mutaions giving an advantage. T Rex had the survival advantage. It did not need a brain that craeted language and writing. That is our survival advantage. Our brain and articulate speech. We can figure out how to live anywhere, even in space.

 

[Politesse]

So did Reptiles ever invest extensively in their young? It seems to me that the Reptile strategy is to have as many young as possible, with quick development times. This likely precludes the social pressure necessary for cognitive ability to emerge, that is unless Mammals arise (which they did).

There have been some examples of reptiles that care for the young over the long term, including the Cretaceous, mosasaurs and other marine reptiles who evidently bore live young. Many dinosaurs did as well.

In terms of pro-social behaviors other than parenting, many carnivorous dinosaurs show evidence of pack hunting.

 

[Elixir]

Meet the Flintstones.

Anyhow, I’m still trying to reconcile that T-Rex was chronologically closer to an iPhone than to a Stegosaurus.

 

[BH]

How can scientists determine that an asteroid collision 100 million years led to an asteroid hitting Earth 65 million years ago ?

 

[steve_bank]

Archeology is like interpreting the bible.

The science shows on archelogy are interesting and informative, but the speculations can be thin.

 

[Politesse]

The actual science of archaeology is not well-represented by television shows.

 

[Jokodo]

I think one of the key questions is what would cause the ability of humans to emerge. Probably this begins long before our species existed, and starts with increased parental investment and a heightened social complexity in the family unit.

In our specific lineage, eventually metabolic activity shifted from brute strength to increased cognitive ability. I'd argue that intelligence isn't critical here, but rather social intelligence which is broader in scope. In humans, cognitive ability became a key factor in sexual selection, which led to even more social and technical complexity.

So did Reptiles ever invest extensively in their young? It seems to me that the Reptile strategy is to have as many young as possible, with quick development times. This likely precludes the social pressure necessary for cognitive ability to emerge, that is unless Mammals arise (which they did).

I don't know about other reptiles, but extant dinosaurs almost universally have small litters, in many species typically just one chick per year, and in many cases feed the chicks right until they reach adult size and can only be recognized as juveniles by their distinctive feathering.

 

[bilby]

Archaeologists have trouble finding much of anything from the Early Medieval period in Europe (what was formerly called the 'Dark Ages')

Once the Romans and their immediate successors stopped building with masonry, there's just not that much that is easy to find, until the Normans start building castles and cathedrals from stone again some five centuries later.

The small amount of stuff that does survive suggests a civilisation of great complexity and technical expertise. Their jewellery and blades were superb, and their buildings and clothing of very good quality and design; But apart from small amounts of gold, not much remains - wood, leather, and steel all deteriorate very quickly in all but the most favourable anoxic conditions, and so little has lasted the 1,000 - 1,500 years to the present day. Gold survives very well, but was rarely lost - a man who loses a button or a ribbon might not spend too much time looking for it, but losing something made of gold would prompt him to search until it's found - so most gold objects tended to get recycled.

And that's after 1,000 years. A similar level of advancement and sophistication 100,000,000 years ago would leave even less evidence for us to find today.

Who's to say for certain that dinosaurs didn't include species that had a level of technology and civilisation comparable to anything from the neolithic to the Early Medieval? Even an Iron Age level of technology would be pretty much undetectable at tens of millions of years remove, when not only has almost every organic material decayed, but entire continents have marched across the planet rubbing out any evidence.

Fossils are rare (and by their nature, are unrepresentative of the wider era to which they belong*). Unless you are extraordinarily lucky, you're never going to find and correctly identify a dinosaur buried in a ceremonial fashion with grave goods - even if such things were quite common for a few millennia sometime in the Cretaceous.




*Similarly to Pompeii and Herculaneum - the remains tell us a lot about what was happening, but not about what was different on the thousands of days when there wasn't a massive volcano erupting. So a degree of caution is needed in interpreting the few fossils we do have. Are those footprints predators chasing prey, or both species fleeing whatever geological event led to that particular day's footprints becoming fossilised?

 

[bilby]

The actual science of archaeology is not well-represented by television shows.

With the possible exception of anything that Mick Aston was associated with.

 

[steve_bank]

I saw Stephen J Gould speak in Seattle at Benaroya Hall to a packed house. He died a few years later.

He said one of his chronic complaints was the presentation of the idea that humans came from apes. There is plenty of misconceptions in popular culture.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I'm curious to speculate whether an intelligent species of Dinosaurs would have arisen, and if so, where, and whether they would have been able to dominate all of the continents eventually.

At the time of the K-T asteroid, T-Rex was the undisputed predator in North America. But he didn't rule everywhere. I think it's been pretty much debunked that Dinosaurs were already on their way out by the time of the K-T strike. So I would presume they would continue evolving. Would T-Rex and it's food sources continued an evolutionary arms race? Both getting bigger and bigger?

But would one of them evolved more intelligence and could that have made a difference? T-Rex's brain to body ratio, from what I read, could put it on the scale of Chimpanzee intelligence. But I'm not sure about their brain structure. Could they have evolved an even greater intelligence? And if so, how would that have changed them? Or is there simply no such evolutionary pressure on them because they're at the top of the food chain regardless? Could other predators evolve intelligence just in order to compete with T-Rex for food sources. Humans evolved with predators around them, but those predators weren't substantially larger than them. They could at least fend off attacks without modern weaponry.

Europe was mainly a series of Islands and the Dinosaurs were significantly smaller. Maybe it might have been easier for an intelligent species to arise their without the competition from a huge predator like T-Rex, or the other predators that were in South America, or other places.

I don't see the K-T asteroid as inevitable. It easily could have missed and plunged into the sun or some other body. From another article I read, there had been some collision in the asteroid belt about 100 million years before the strike.

Do you have a link in re. chimp-like brain/body ratio? Also, what about the size of the cerebrum?

 

[rousseau]

So did Reptiles ever invest extensively in their young? It seems to me that the Reptile strategy is to have as many young as possible, with quick development times. This likely precludes the social pressure necessary for cognitive ability to emerge, that is unless Mammals arise (which they did).

There have been some examples of reptiles that care for the young over the long term, including the Cretaceous, mosasaurs and other marine reptiles who evidently bore live young. Many dinosaurs did as well.

In terms of pro-social behaviors other than parenting, many carnivorous dinosaurs show evidence of pack hunting.

It definitely happened, although humans (and other primates) seem to be somewhat unique in that regard, and it may have taken a certain combination of factors to get there. Bipedalism, and opposable thumbs seem important as well.

Probably when living organisms become a social / intellectual species they look a lot like humans.

 

[bilby]

So did Reptiles ever invest extensively in their young? It seems to me that the Reptile strategy is to have as many young as possible, with quick development times. This likely precludes the social pressure necessary for cognitive ability to emerge, that is unless Mammals arise (which they did).

There have been some examples of reptiles that care for the young over the long term, including the Cretaceous, mosasaurs and other marine reptiles who evidently bore live young. Many dinosaurs did as well.

In terms of pro-social behaviors other than parenting, many carnivorous dinosaurs show evidence of pack hunting.

It definitely happened, although humans (and other primates) seem to be somewhat unique in that regard, and it may have taken a certain combination of factors to get there. Bipedalism, and opposable thumbs seem important as well.

Probably when living organisms become a social / intellectual species they look a lot like humans.

As n=1, I would certainly hesitate to say "probably". Maybe I could tolerate "possibly".