How would the world be different if. . . dinosaurs never went extinct?

[Remus]

For people who draw their knowledge from the Jurassic Park films, raptors would seem the obvious choice. but the reality is that raptors were equivalent to giant chickens.

They weren't even giant, were they? I'm pretty sure the raptors they based the movie critters on were like, knee-high to be generous.

Weren't the movie dinos more physically sized like dinonychus? I possibly spelled that wrong.

Yeah. Here's a comparison I pulled up from Wikipedia, which included the utahraptor. Deinonychus was what the films were aiming for but that name doesn't roll off the tongue like "velociraptor".

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah. Here's a comparison I pulled up from Wikipedia, which included the utahraptor. Deinonychus was what the films were aiming for but that name doesn't roll off the tongue like "velociraptor".

True, raptor is much easier to say.

But damn you Hollywood! Must you sully everything I hold sacred?

 

[Hoplon]

I dunno really but this was an interesting take on it at Dresden codak [http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/07/the-sleepwalkers/]

 

[Your Rival]

Nazis would rule the Earth from atop their dino-compatriots. Thats just science.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[R Man]

First of all Dinosaurs did not go extinct. Avian dinosaurs still exist, and their are actually more species of avian dinosaur than mammal species.

two possible solutions: either dinosaurs continue to rule the world as they did, largely unchanged due to lack of competition or apes manage to survive and evovle into humans, possibly speeding it up even more as we got even larger predators to defend agast, which would likely mean we would have had less wars and more "dino hunts" in our history, and would have hunted them into extinction. Just like we did mammoths.

Err... no. If non-avian dinosaurs did not go extinct, then there are no apes. At all. Therefore no humans. Archarosaur selection pressure would continue impact on mammal evolution as it had done for most of the Mesozoic.

Thats fair, dinosaurs would not allow apes to exist to begin with. but if by some chance apes did exist, like, say, on a seperate continent, then dino wars could happen, hurrr

Fair enough. To be honest, if a bunch of dinosaurs were dropped on earth right now, I think that tree dwelling animals like apes, monkeys and some cats would do alright.

Aren't Crocks, gators and Comodo Dragon's kinda still Dinosaurs?

Crocodilians are reletives of the dinosaurs, but Komodo Dragons are not relatives of Dinosaurs. Birds of course, are direct descendants of Therepod dinosaurs.

But their time was kinda on the Jurassic anyway; the biggest sauropodes went extinct before the Triassic (when dinosaurs like T-rex or Triceratops lived.)

Your dating seems to be a little of. T. rex and Triceratops lived in the Cretaceous. Sauropods evolved after the Triassic. And they did not go extinct at the end of the Jurassic. Titanosaur finds in Australia and South America indicate that sauropods survived well into the Cretaceous.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

there is a guy in the usa who is trying to reverse engineer them from the dormant dna. kind of trippy to see chickens with teeth and scaley legs

This is extremely unlikely if not impossible, as DNA will not survive that long in the enviroment.
EDIT: Wait, I think I know what you meant. You mean, reverse engineer them from the chicken DNA to "go back"? That's an interesting way of doing it.. but there's a lot of DNA changed in >65 million years. I wonder how far back they can go and still have viable offspring (probably not very far at all).

OT: I doubt the current climate is warm enough for large cold-blooded reptiles like dinosaurs, atleast in most of the Northern hemisphere. All the bigger ones will probably have gone extinct or only be around in Africa or Australia.
I also doubt mammals would've blossomed as much as they did with gigantic flesh eating carnivores still roaming around.

 

[Hoplon]

there is a guy in the usa who is trying to reverse engineer them from the dormant dna. kind of trippy to see chickens with teeth and scaley legs

This is extremely unlikely if not impossible, as DNA will not survive that long in the enviroment.
EDIT: Wait, I think I know what you meant. You mean, reverse engineer them from the chicken DNA to "go back"? That's an interesting way of doing it.. but there's a lot of DNA changed in >65 million years. I wonder how far back they can go and still have viable offspring (probably not very far at all).

OT: I doubt the current climate is warm enough for large cold-blooded reptiles like dinosaurs, atleast in most of the Northern hemisphere. All the bigger ones will probably have gone extinct or only be around in Africa or Australia.
I also doubt mammals would've blossomed as much as they did with gigantic flesh eating carnivores still roaming around.

Dinosaurs aren't reptiles. there is no evidence they where cold blooded either, i am wondering where you got that from.

 

[Headsprouter]

I've always imagined (as silly as it might be) that we'd all be super-intelligent velociraptors. Being a super-smart bird is more likely, though, since that's where dinosaurs were heading, and even with the meteorite, we managed to get a fair amount of clever birdies, anyway.

 

[llew]

well if we assumed that apes did survive long enough to evolve into humans and we evolved enough to get our technology etc. we would have some AWESOME pets... imagine: instead of riding horses we ride velociraptors and T-rex's and instead of planes we tamed pterodactyl's as our main air transport

 

[Thedutchjelle]

there is a guy in the usa who is trying to reverse engineer them from the dormant dna. kind of trippy to see chickens with teeth and scaley legs

This is extremely unlikely if not impossible, as DNA will not survive that long in the enviroment.
EDIT: Wait, I think I know what you meant. You mean, reverse engineer them from the chicken DNA to "go back"? That's an interesting way of doing it.. but there's a lot of DNA changed in >65 million years. I wonder how far back they can go and still have viable offspring (probably not very far at all).

OT: I doubt the current climate is warm enough for large cold-blooded reptiles like dinosaurs, atleast in most of the Northern hemisphere. All the bigger ones will probably have gone extinct or only be around in Africa or Australia.
I also doubt mammals would've blossomed as much as they did with gigantic flesh eating carnivores still roaming around.

Dinosaurs aren't reptiles. there is no evidence they where cold blooded either, i am wondering where you got that from.

Oh! I always thought they were.
...
Can I blame their portrayal in the popular media? They always draw them like big reptiles.. I guess that's how it got stuck in my head.

I'll try to remember that so I won't mess that up next time, thanks. Now I really want to see arctic dinosaurs

Captcha: It's over.

 

[Hoplon]

Oh! I always thought they were.
...
Can I blame their portrayal in the popular media? They always draw them like big reptiles.. I guess that's how it got stuck in my head.

I'll try to remember that so I won't mess that up next time, thanks. Now I really want to see arctic dinosaurs

Captcha: It's over.

Yeah that's fine, sorry for being so abrupt. They are probably lizard off shoots and lizards existed before and at the same time, dinosaurs then spawned birds as an off shoot.

 

[Nosirrah]

We'd be in the shit. 65 million years of evolution for a Dino would be massive. You'd probably have triceratops with laser beams. And a pack of raptors equipped with bows, or even guns. (we made them, so why can't a creature that didn't have to evolve to be the top dog?)
I imagine the one with the big spikes on it's back ( stegosaurus? ) would evolve them into proper spikes, and likely develop poison for them.

 

[Someone Depressing]

There'd probably be none of us. What little humans there were, stumbling around eastern Kenya, would probably be killed out almost instantly. We weren't as intelligent back then, so we'd either try to take it on (and the ever historically important Mother of Humans, the first woman to give birth would probably die in the fray) and fail miserably, or run and hide, and never leave that cave, line on rats and insects, and drink our own piss to live.

So... nope. We've never really be, as some magical force is keeping the last two dinosaurs of the same species but oppostie genders from dying.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

Mmmmmmm, stegosaurus burger and triceratops steak...

I mean, the whole fear of being killed and devoured part would suck but it's probably no more dangerous than living in Australia.

Plus, eating a dinosaur! Awesome!

 

[Johnny Impact]

It's a natural mistake to assume evolution always trends towards greater intelligence. Of all the millions of species that have come and gone, only one has evolved intelligence sufficient for invention.

It's another natural mistake to assume intelligence equals success. The common house fly is unbelievably successful and it's so dumb it is literally incapable of learning anything ever (except in the long-term evolutionary sense where it "learns" to have faster reflexes to avoid being eaten/swatted.)

If dinosaurs had not gone extinct, odds are the planet would be populated by large, unthinking reptilian creatures eating plants and each other, much as it was before. New species, of course, but probably none smart enough to do more than bang rocks together.

 

[Korena Bailey]

Let's just for a moment kick around what this planet would look like if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out.

Well for starters, there would likely be less of us. ALOT less of us probably. Actually, I don't think we would be the dominant species anymore. That or we would all be velociraptors.

we might see the dinosaur humanoids from Journey to the Center of the Earth (the older one with Treat Williams, though I also like the newer one with Brendan Fraser).

Let's have a look at those velociraptors. Just the thought of them not being extinct alone is scary. From what we can examine, they were already clever SOB's. speed, stealth, agility, natural weaponry, pack tactics, and supposedly they could vocalize. Now give them 65 million years to evolve over. Say, apposable thumbs. sentience. tool use. Now I am imagining a raptor that shoots prey with a bow then closes in to kill with talons and teeth. That and they would probably not lose their pack mentality either. so a pack that peppers a target with arrows and then moves in and takes them down. Yeah ok I am very glad dinos aren't around!

Tyrannosaurus. Might evolve to have powerful muscular arms with grasping hands. Yikes!

How might the herbivores evolve though? what would happen to say the triceratops that has to now deal with the two afformentioned predators?

This sounds almost like an evolutionary arms race.

No one ever researchers anything they see in movies do they?
First off, what jurrasic park shows as 'valociraptors' is completely wrong. Real valociraptors are stupid, no smarter than a 1year old baby. No they couldn't open doors, or think on a strategic level. Also, they were small, bout 2-3ft tall and were covered in feathers.
What jurrasic park shows are actually a dinosaur that's start with a 'D' forget the name, much less appealing then velociraptor though, and they weren't any smarter than a 2year old, also covered in feathers. They would of died regardless.

The true smartest dinosaur to ever roam the earth is a Troodon (true-oh-don) however they were the smartest, they were still not NEARLY as smart as anything jurrasic park shows. They were still stupid creatures with little to no thinking, nor strategic thinking to say the least. Dinosaurs were not smart, plain and simple, if they never would of died out it is true our population would be smaller, but we would of taken control at some point.

Also, there is now evidence that SOME dinosaurs did walk along side to humankind, they have found footprints of dinosaurs and from humans on the same path, from the same time period. When all dinosaurs were truly extinct is a question to still be answered.

 

[Lovecrafts Sunny Day]

Are there not 'museums' (and I use that term VERY loosely...) depicting humans and dinosaurs living together in parts of the Bible belt in the US? Are they deranged? Or just fans of the Flintstones? To be fair, that giant rack of ribs looked pretty sweet.

Maybe us Homo Sapiens teamed up with the Neanderthals and kicked all their asses!! Or Perhaps Not...

As mentioned above, hominids had enough on their hands with existing mega fauna, let alone giant lizards as well.
(top class hands though, precision grip, what's that genus pan? no precision grip? well you're f*cked when it comes to developing complex tools then, no ipad for you mate, you are all some twots)

I would be interested in evidence that suggested co-existence of our species and dinosaurs, before the evolution towards avian species, can you honestly supply any?

 

[Vault101]

snip.

they probably wouldn;t resemble the "dinosuars" we know today

We'd be in the shit. 65 million years of evolution for a Dino would be massive. You'd probably have triceratops with laser beams. And a pack of raptors equipped with bows, or even guns. (we made them, so why can't a creature that didn't have to evolve to be the top dog?)
I imagine the one with the big spikes on it's back ( stegosaurus? ) would evolve them into proper spikes, and likely develop poison for them.

thats not how evolution works

"evolution" and "improvment" are two entirly seperate concepts...it just goes where it goes...we weren't an inevitable porgression...we were a fluke