I was thinking about evolution and, yes I believe in it but how could it have happened if ALL the dinosaurs got wiped out. How can they evolve if there not there?



DISCUSS.

Therapod dinosaurs had already branched off into birds before the dinopocalypse. The birds survived becuase dinosaurs were too fat and starved to death while new creatures had a food party.

CaptainOomp wrote:Therapod dinosaurs had already branched off into birds before the dinopocalypse. The birds survived becuase dinosaurs were too fat and starved to death while new creatures had a food party.

Yeah, the dinosaurs were the only type of creature to go extinct 100% and the remaining creatures just kept on evolving.

They do actually have two categories of dinosaur: avian & non-avian.
Take a guess.

Though let's be honest, birds & dinosaurs do share a lot of similarities.
We diverged from our pelycosaur brothers even earlier.

Dinosaurs were not the only organisms to exist 65 million years ago, you know.

The big sauropods and theropods were all wiped out, they have no direct descendants.

The bird family was already a distinct offshoot of the dinosaurs before the KT extinction event.

Lots of controversy has risen from this.

But no humans were back there so we can only guess.

Hamilton302 wrote:Lots of controversy has risen from this.

But no humans were back there so we can only guess.

Even if they were, and left a record, we could only conjecture about it's meaning. There are plenty of stories that went with pictographs that "everybody understood", and are lost and garbled now.

Bird fossils first appear ~95 million years ago as direct offshoots of late Jurassic bird-like dinosaurs. These continue across the K-T boundary and into the modern era. The non-avian dinosaurs (as well as vast swathes of the biosphere) abruptly vanish at the K-T boundary.

This suggests that modern birds evolved from a family of small, feathered dinosaurs in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous and that their small size (and small energy needs) allowed them to survive the K-T extinction event that eliminated most species of terrestrial megafauna.

Large animals are typically the first to go when there is an abrupt and destructive change in environmental conditions. They require a tremendous amount of available biomass to maintain a viable breeding population and their genetic diversity is typically significantly lower than a smaller, more numerous, and faster reproducing species.

These are all valid points.

But has anyone considered The Reapers?

SporeMasterSlyth33 wrote:Bird fossils first appear ~95 million years ago as direct offshoots of late Jurassic bird-like dinosaurs. These continue across the K-T boundary and into the modern era. The non-avian dinosaurs (as well as vast swathes of the biosphere) abruptly vanish at the K-T boundary.

This suggests that modern birds evolved from a family of small, feathered dinosaurs in the late Jurassic or early Cretaceous and that their small size (and small energy needs) allowed them to survive the K-T extinction event that eliminated most species of terrestrial megafauna.

Large animals are typically the first to go when there is an abrupt and destructive change in environmental conditions. They require a tremendous amount of available biomass to maintain a viable breeding population and their genetic diversity is typically significantly lower than a smaller, more numerous, and faster reproducing species.

The dinosaur remains do not simply vanish at the K-T boundary. There is actually evidence they continued to survive for millions of years after the asteroid hit, though their grip on the planet was weakened considerably and they eventually lost to mammals.

Just a quick update on my leaving sporum status: I think I'll make posts in this section, but the rest of the place seems to be a mess. Anyway, I think sauropods were already extinct by the KT event... checking...

I'm christan and i find this offensive
JK

Stuart98 wrote:Just a quick update on my leaving sporum status: I think I'll make posts in this section, but the rest of the place seems to be a mess. Anyway, I think sauropods were already extinct by the KT event... checking...

Some of the more exotic regions hosted some remaining sauropods.

There was even a miniature species on one of the small islands that existed at the time (Ateg, I believe it was?), the offspring of which were subject to aggressive hunting by some of the largest pterosaurs to exist at the time, pterosaurs large enough that their ability to fly has been subject to debate.

That ecosystem persisted until a bit after the KT event, eventually dieing off with the other dinosaurs.
Of course, those going down the avian branch soon thrived into a whole new order, interestingly enough.

cpelite wrote:

Stuart98 wrote:Just a quick update on my leaving sporum status: I think I'll make posts in this section, but the rest of the place seems to be a mess. Anyway, I think sauropods were already extinct by the KT event... checking...

Some of the more exotic regions hosted some remaining sauropods.

There was even a miniature species on one of the small islands that existed at the time (Ateg, I believe it was?), the offspring of which were subject to aggressive hunting by some of the largest pterosaurs to exist at the time, pterosaurs large enough that their ability to fly has been subject to debate.

You were close. It's Hateg Island (which is today part of Romania). There were two species of pygmy sauropods there actually, Paludititan and Magyarosaurus, both around 6 meters in length.

Also some sauropods still lived in less exotic areas. Alamosaurus, for one, was in the United States, and lived right up to the end of the Mesozoic.