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Birdless world; stronger K-T
Topic Started: Nov 5 2009, 08:41 PM (4,592 Views)
Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

65 million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth and wiped out a good percentage of life on the planet.

Among the extinct were all dinosaurs (save for birds), all air reptiles, all marine reptiles, and a few groups I forgot to mention (I'm not a paleontologist, so if someone were to name all the groups that went extinct, I'd be grateful).



Anyway, what I was wondering was: what if the asteroid had been slightly larger? Large enough to count the birds among those forever buried in the fossil record.

What would the post K-T world be like without birds?

Discuss ideas and possible creatures.


P.S. If you're interested in turning this into an actual project, let me know.
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Margaret Pye
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Adult
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And as I've said before, multis were not wiped out by KT, and multis were wiped out by global drying and/or competition with rodents. Global drying and rodents still exist in ALworld.

So if you're writing during AL's Eocene or Oligocene, then yes, multis are good. But I can't see why killing off all dinosaurs would make multituberculates survive past that.
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Multis would most likely go extinct in the Eocene, sure. I was just saying that they aren't wiped out by K-T.



Oh, BTW, we're speculating in modern times. The Holocene.
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Margaret Pye
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Sorry, that is what I meant. I must have phrased things obscurely.
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Birds weren't really new at K-T. They'd been around a while already.

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Oh I know. I'm thinking that the really began to diversify around the early to mid Cretaceous.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Yeah, but the neornithes proper were quite a bit later. You wouldn't have so many scavenging or foraging forms.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Well, birds are extinct anyway. Why do we have to worry about how early they diversified?
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

:)

Life in the sea will no doubt change without sea birds.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Yep. Marine diversity will explode in the avian absense. Though bats or marsupavians will fill the vacant niche relatively quickly.
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Margaret Pye
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Or seals/whales/otters.

Does absence of penguins imply foot-long seals or dolphins? Those sound cute.
My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont.
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Carlos
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Most likely just implies more otters or maybe small endothermic leatherback turtles or more predatory fish
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Penguin otters sound cool. But great auks have to be replaced (in our time, they are replaced with fishermen).
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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