What if the Great Dying never Happened?
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1) The Great Dying occurred about 252 mya. We were already in the Late Triassic 220 mya, which is around the time the first dinosaurs started showing up in the fossil record.
2) With regard to percentages, up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. It was the largest known mass extinction of insects, with some 57% of all biological families and 83% of all genera becoming extinct.
3) Siberian Death Traps. In geology, traps refer to a large igneous province and has nothing to do with death. The Siberian Traps were a series of eruptions that occurred roughly over an 800, 000 year period, before, during, and after the extinction event.
4) What animals had a bad breathing system? I've never seen this before. Animals with any bad system wouldn't have evolved in the first place.
5) Dicynodonts are part of the larger group, Therapsida. Therapsids belong to a larger group of proto-mammals, called the Synapsids. Lystrosaurs are Dicynodonts.
6) Diapsids, the group that lead to dinosaurs, were in the Permian, though Synapsids were dominant. Had the Great Dying not occurred, there is still the possibility that once they began to evolve, dinosaurs would still become the dominant land species.
7) The term avian applies strictly to birds. Dragonflys can't be avian.
8) The reason dragonflys and other terrestrial arthropods grew so large, was because of all the oxygen in the atmosphere given off by the immense Carboniferious Period forests.
9) As for trilobites, though one of the most successful early animals, they were already headed for extinction when numbers began to decline during the Devonian Period. With no Great Dying, who knows? They may have had a new burst of evolutionary diversity. Brachiopods and Crinoids survived, though their numbers are not as great as during the Paleozoic Era. Most of the early corals went extinct too. Modern corals are descended from the one group that made it through.
10) Mid Triassic Mass Extinction that wiped out the mammal-like reptiles. Is this in reference to the early Late Triassic, Carnian Pluvial Event? Occurring between about 234 and 232 million years ago, most negatively effected were marine species like ammonoids, conodonts, bryozoa, and crinoids. There are no references to mammal-like reptiles being wiped out. Conversely, there was the first appearance of dinosaurs and lepidosaurs (snakes, and lizards) - Earlier this video said that the Permian-Triassic Extinction (Great Dying) happened 220 mya, which is some 12 million years after the Late Triassic, Carnian Pluvial Event - a bit of an inconstincy. There was the Triassic-Jurassic, Mass Extinction Event that occurred roughly 200 mya, that resulted in the demise of some 76 percent of all marine and terrestrial species. It is thought that this end-Triassic Mass Extinction was what allowed dinosaurs to become the dominant land animals on Earth.
11) The less hyperbole, the better.
Date: 2022-07-15
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Comments and reviews: 9
whatifalthist
With the greatest possible respect, I disagree. If the mammal-like-reptiles survived the Great Dying & Triassic extinctions, modern mammals probably would never have evolved. Sure, they'd be furry like mammals, but they 'd probably still lay eggs like the platypus does today. Natural selection only works when the individuals that are not strong enough, or not fast enough, or not smart enough die out. Modern mammals only evolved because after most of the mammal-like-reptiles died out, the few survivors were forced to adapt to extreme situations. With the dinosaurs taking up almost every available ecological niche, mammals were under extremely high selective pressure. Mammals became highly endothermic b/c it was only safe to hunt for insects in the cool of the night when mesothermic dinosaurs were less active. Except for the platypus & echidna isolated on the island continent of Australia, mammals could not safely reproduce by laying eggs. Even in an underground burrow, the eggs were at risk of being eaten by snakes and lizards and other predictors, or the entire burrow could be crushed by a single dinosaur footstep. So marsupials & later placental mammals evolved.
But could there be an intelligent species? Possibly, it is hard to say. Primates evolved to eat fruit in the jungles after the non-avian-dinosaurs went extinct & our ancestors became intelligent as the Earth was going thru multiple ice ages & warming cycles over & over so that no one physical adaptation would cut it, we had to have the intelligence to adapt to different dangers & find different foods depending on what random situation nature threw at us next. Maybe with the mammal-like-reptiles having such an easy time of it for so many millions of years, tiny dinosaurs would have been scavengers & tree climbers & if the most recent extinction 65 million years ago wiped out most of the mammal-like-reptiles, maybe the small dinosaurs would adapt to more habitats & eventually one of them would evolve intelligence. May be. Or maybe not. Dinosaurs were around for for over 150 million years, survived minor extinction events & adapted to many diverse habitats, but n ever produced an intelligent species. There could be lots of planets around the galaxy with life, but no intelligent species.
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With the greatest possible respect, I disagree. If the mammal-like-reptiles survived the Great Dying & Triassic extinctions, modern mammals probably would never have evolved. Sure, they'd be furry like mammals, but they 'd probably still lay eggs like the platypus does today. Natural selection only works when the individuals that are not strong enough, or not fast enough, or not smart enough die out. Modern mammals only evolved because after most of the mammal-like-reptiles died out, the few survivors were forced to adapt to extreme situations. With the dinosaurs taking up almost every available ecological niche, mammals were under extremely high selective pressure. Mammals became highly endothermic b/c it was only safe to hunt for insects in the cool of the night when mesothermic dinosaurs were less active. Except for the platypus & echidna isolated on the island continent of Australia, mammals could not safely reproduce by laying eggs. Even in an underground burrow, the eggs were at risk of being eaten by snakes and lizards and other predictors, or the entire burrow could be crushed by a single dinosaur footstep. So marsupials & later placental mammals evolved.
But could there be an intelligent species? Possibly, it is hard to say. Primates evolved to eat fruit in the jungles after the non-avian-dinosaurs went extinct & our ancestors became intelligent as the Earth was going thru multiple ice ages & warming cycles over & over so that no one physical adaptation would cut it, we had to have the intelligence to adapt to different dangers & find different foods depending on what random situation nature threw at us next. Maybe with the mammal-like-reptiles having such an easy time of it for so many millions of years, tiny dinosaurs would have been scavengers & tree climbers & if the most recent extinction 65 million years ago wiped out most of the mammal-like-reptiles, maybe the small dinosaurs would adapt to more habitats & eventually one of them would evolve intelligence. May be. Or maybe not. Dinosaurs were around for for over 150 million years, survived minor extinction events & adapted to many diverse habitats, but n ever produced an intelligent species. There could be lots of planets around the galaxy with life, but no intelligent species.
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Al
Nice video however I have to say I think you're wrong when you say that mammals still probably would've evolved if the great dying never happened or that mammal-like reptiles likely would've become humanoid. Evolution is far too sporadic to follow the script that we've seen play out. Consider the butterfly effect, in theory if you so much as stepped on a bug 300 million years ago, the entire world would be completely different and we'd most likely not exist. So imagine the consequence of changing such a significant global event. The creature that spawned the first true mammal by chance almost certainly never would've come to be and therefore no mammals or humans. As for humanoids evolving from another species, converging evolution shows us it is possible but it's still extremely unlikely, take apes out of the equation and look at the current top contenders for most intelligent creatures, octopuses, dolphins, crows, pigs, dogs etc should any of them become the dominant species, it's hard to imagine them suddenly becoming humanoid. I imagine the same would be said for the mammal-like reptiles.
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Nice video however I have to say I think you're wrong when you say that mammals still probably would've evolved if the great dying never happened or that mammal-like reptiles likely would've become humanoid. Evolution is far too sporadic to follow the script that we've seen play out. Consider the butterfly effect, in theory if you so much as stepped on a bug 300 million years ago, the entire world would be completely different and we'd most likely not exist. So imagine the consequence of changing such a significant global event. The creature that spawned the first true mammal by chance almost certainly never would've come to be and therefore no mammals or humans. As for humanoids evolving from another species, converging evolution shows us it is possible but it's still extremely unlikely, take apes out of the equation and look at the current top contenders for most intelligent creatures, octopuses, dolphins, crows, pigs, dogs etc should any of them become the dominant species, it's hard to imagine them suddenly becoming humanoid. I imagine the same would be said for the mammal-like reptiles.
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education
9: 40 perhaps these truly exist, but bc they were already so unimaginably advanced as you said, they decided to leave earth altogether and observe from settlements on other planets, in order to see if earth can develop intelligent civilization for a second time or their appearance was an extremely rare and unlikely event. This, which I just thought of, reminds me of the zoo hypothesis, which says that aliens know of our existence and are observing us while concealing their own existence from us, but this hypothesis has the additional funny consequence that those watching us are from earth, and are still living in the solar system, watching us from inside it, making them our relatives instead of aliens. As for the proof we have of the great dying having happened, and the fact that the survival of those species is literally being discussed in an alternate history video, well, such an advanced civilization could easily plant evidence to convince lesser intelligence that it doesn't exist
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9: 40 perhaps these truly exist, but bc they were already so unimaginably advanced as you said, they decided to leave earth altogether and observe from settlements on other planets, in order to see if earth can develop intelligent civilization for a second time or their appearance was an extremely rare and unlikely event. This, which I just thought of, reminds me of the zoo hypothesis, which says that aliens know of our existence and are observing us while concealing their own existence from us, but this hypothesis has the additional funny consequence that those watching us are from earth, and are still living in the solar system, watching us from inside it, making them our relatives instead of aliens. As for the proof we have of the great dying having happened, and the fact that the survival of those species is literally being discussed in an alternate history video, well, such an advanced civilization could easily plant evidence to convince lesser intelligence that it doesn't exist
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Sakkra1993
Who knows? If the Permian extinction never happened the First Age of Mammals (as I sometimes call the Permian period) would have likely continued on for hundreds of millions of years, it is possible we might have evolved directly from the Mammal-like Reptiles (so we might end up looking something like a Krogan, from Mass Effect, or even something like my own pfp, yet, assuming the Cretaceous asteroid isn't early or late we'd die out then (unless the 200+ millions of years have given us the means to survive it, leading to the rise of the Dinosaurs (like how they took over when our relatives died out during the Great Dying, who might evolve into a race of Reptile Men after many tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of years, and it would be the Dino Men digging our bones out of the rocks, piecing together the events of how an asteroid aeons before their time wiped out the Mammals.
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Who knows? If the Permian extinction never happened the First Age of Mammals (as I sometimes call the Permian period) would have likely continued on for hundreds of millions of years, it is possible we might have evolved directly from the Mammal-like Reptiles (so we might end up looking something like a Krogan, from Mass Effect, or even something like my own pfp, yet, assuming the Cretaceous asteroid isn't early or late we'd die out then (unless the 200+ millions of years have given us the means to survive it, leading to the rise of the Dinosaurs (like how they took over when our relatives died out during the Great Dying, who might evolve into a race of Reptile Men after many tens, possibly hundreds, of millions of years, and it would be the Dino Men digging our bones out of the rocks, piecing together the events of how an asteroid aeons before their time wiped out the Mammals.
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Scribble1k
There's an issue with your proposal of insects filling the current niche of birds. Large dragonflies (griffinflies) were actually long gone by the time of the great dying, along with the rest of the massive insects of the Paleozoic. During a period called the Carboniferous, runaway forest growth caused a huge spike in global oxygen levels and temperatures. Since the main limitation for insect size is their comparatively inefficient respiratory system, the spike in oxygen allowed them to grow to massive sizes. However, at the end of the Carboniferous, an event called the great rainforest collapse (possibly caused by the formation of Pangaea) resulted in a drop in oxygen levels, along with a mass extinction event that signalled the start of the Permian.
Tldr, giant bugs were long gone by the great dying, and wouldn't be able to survive in the Triassic environment anyways
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There's an issue with your proposal of insects filling the current niche of birds. Large dragonflies (griffinflies) were actually long gone by the time of the great dying, along with the rest of the massive insects of the Paleozoic. During a period called the Carboniferous, runaway forest growth caused a huge spike in global oxygen levels and temperatures. Since the main limitation for insect size is their comparatively inefficient respiratory system, the spike in oxygen allowed them to grow to massive sizes. However, at the end of the Carboniferous, an event called the great rainforest collapse (possibly caused by the formation of Pangaea) resulted in a drop in oxygen levels, along with a mass extinction event that signalled the start of the Permian.
Tldr, giant bugs were long gone by the great dying, and wouldn't be able to survive in the Triassic environment anyways
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LordofFullmetal
Couple of notes:
-There are a few severe factual errors here. I won't point them out again, because people in the comments have done that.
-I can literally hear every single spot where you paused to read the script. It sounds like you didn't even write it - it sounds like you had no idea what it said until you recorded THIS take, and this is your very first readthrough. That easily could've been fixed by just. studying your own script a couple more times, or doing more takes, so I really can't excuse it. I've literally forgotten a script mid performance and not been as clunky as this - and I didn't have editing to help me.
I can't get past it when there are huge issues like this that would've been SO easy to solve, because it makes it look like you didn't put effort in. It just feels lazy.
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Couple of notes:
-There are a few severe factual errors here. I won't point them out again, because people in the comments have done that.
-I can literally hear every single spot where you paused to read the script. It sounds like you didn't even write it - it sounds like you had no idea what it said until you recorded THIS take, and this is your very first readthrough. That easily could've been fixed by just. studying your own script a couple more times, or doing more takes, so I really can't excuse it. I've literally forgotten a script mid performance and not been as clunky as this - and I didn't have editing to help me.
I can't get past it when there are huge issues like this that would've been SO easy to solve, because it makes it look like you didn't put effort in. It just feels lazy.
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Raj
One has to wonder if mammals didn't thrive because of the pressures placed upon them after the Permian. Virtually all mammals evolve from a bottleneck of mammiliforms that became nocturnal during the Jurassic. Even during the Triassic Dinosaurs weren't really the dominant species, Rauisuchians were. Triassic Dions were wimpy and underwhelming.
It's fun to imagine humans arriving 150 million years earlier, but the most advanced mammal of the Cretacous available today was the Opposum. Impressive as the Inostrancevia were, we probably needed to evolve from shrew-like cretaures.
If the Permian had never happened. Probably by now true mammals would probably be like hippos.
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One has to wonder if mammals didn't thrive because of the pressures placed upon them after the Permian. Virtually all mammals evolve from a bottleneck of mammiliforms that became nocturnal during the Jurassic. Even during the Triassic Dinosaurs weren't really the dominant species, Rauisuchians were. Triassic Dions were wimpy and underwhelming.
It's fun to imagine humans arriving 150 million years earlier, but the most advanced mammal of the Cretacous available today was the Opposum. Impressive as the Inostrancevia were, we probably needed to evolve from shrew-like cretaures.
If the Permian had never happened. Probably by now true mammals would probably be like hippos.
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Mass
Boring, what will civilisations look like?
(edit) 9: 30 -ish these alternate hominids wouldn't have had an extra 150 million years. During the Mezozoic, they still couldn't thrive due to the dinosaur / MLR megafauna, and during the Cenozoic, they'd still have to recover from the KT mass extinction.
At most they'd have 70-ish extra million years, if they could build either bunkers or space technology, which is unlikely both because of the megafauna problems and because there wouldn't be as much coal, or segments of it won't be as high quality.
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Boring, what will civilisations look like?
(edit) 9: 30 -ish these alternate hominids wouldn't have had an extra 150 million years. During the Mezozoic, they still couldn't thrive due to the dinosaur / MLR megafauna, and during the Cenozoic, they'd still have to recover from the KT mass extinction.
At most they'd have 70-ish extra million years, if they could build either bunkers or space technology, which is unlikely both because of the megafauna problems and because there wouldn't be as much coal, or segments of it won't be as high quality.
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winglessang31
There was no Triassic extinction event. The end of the Permian was The Great dying and the other extinction event you mean is the late Cretaceous extinction approximately 66-65 million years ago. Triassic was directly after Permian about 251 million years ago to 201 million years ago.
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There was no Triassic extinction event. The end of the Permian was The Great dying and the other extinction event you mean is the late Cretaceous extinction approximately 66-65 million years ago. Triassic was directly after Permian about 251 million years ago to 201 million years ago.
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