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1 Million years AD; The strange unfamiliar world of the not so distant future
Topic Started: Dec 23 2015, 04:28 AM (6,501 Views)
El Dorito
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Most future evolution projects take place in the more distant future, over 5 million years away. But life can evolve and change over much shorter timescales. This especially applies after extinction events. Only a few hundred thousand years after the K-Pg extinction, Palaeocene mammals had already become larger than any known Mesozoic mammal.

Today, a similar, though as yet less severe extinction event is taking place. Already most of the megafauna that existed for the past several million years have gone extinct, leaving niches open. The only things keeping them open are human activities and time. But history and common sense tell us that at some point in the next thousand years our planetary civilisation will probably collapse, largely eliminating the main factor stopping life carrying on.

Fast forward 1 million years, and the 'wild' is again the normal state of the earth. The oceans have risen some 80 metres due to human induced climate change, for the same reason most of the worlds ice is gone too. Several super volcanoes have erupted, and the last remnants of the modern 'concrete jungle' have crumbled. Humans are rare, and are considerably different to 21st century people. They are no longer a significant force effecting the earth.

Some groups of animals are identical to those we are familiar with, some are similar but obviously different, and a few are unlike anything found in the modern era. This is the world in 1 million years AD.
Edited by El Dorito, Jan 5 2016, 08:55 PM.
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GlarnBoudin
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What about a rodent around the size of a golden retriever? Could that work? As for an ancestor, I think that lemmings would be a better choice than rats-they're already adapted to cold conditions, and they breed like mad.
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revin
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Shagrats are not rats, that's just the name they were given because it sounds cool. They're descended from marmots, which are a type of ground squirrel.
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El Dorito
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I don't think that rats themselves would get a whole lot bigger than they are now because they don't need to, but some rodents might get bigger in some places.
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El Dorito
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I didn't know that there were caiman in Patagonia, I thought it was too cold. Unless the area called Patagonia goes further north than I'm aware of. With the 100 metre sea level rise much of what is today the Amazon basin becomes a large shallow sea that may or may not be salty, kind of like what was there in the Miocene (where there were 15 metre caiman and 9 metre land-shark-crocs with dinosaur teeth around...). Might be interesting.
Edited by El Dorito, Jan 2 2016, 09:54 PM.
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Harmonee
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I always thought that a possible alternative to the shagrat would be a descendant of wild pigs.
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Whiteshore
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What about Australian buffalo which fill niches once filled by giant wombats?
Go to Crurotheria:A world of Killer Rodents,Notosuchid Elephants,and Sirenian Hippos:
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El Dorito
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Hayaba
Jan 3 2016, 01:01 AM
What about Australian buffalo which fill niches once filled by giant wombats?
I'm pretty sure they already do that. But Diprotodon was rather larger than existing buffalo so they might need to get bigger. Giant actual wombats might be possible as well though, but that probably would need a few more million years.
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El Dorito
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Big Red Roo, Macropus rufus grandis

The big red roo is exactly what it sounds like, a larger subspecies of the common red kangaroo of today. The difference is in size, modern red kangaroos are big, but at up to 3 metres tall, the future subspecies is one of the largest kangaroos to have existed. Unlike some other giant kangaroos, big red roos still hop to get around.

At their size, big red roos have little to fear from most predators. However, extra large crocodiles and monitor lizards are still serious threats.
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Bruno01
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El Dorito
Jan 2 2016, 09:53 PM
I didn't know that there were caiman in Patagonia, I thought it was too cold. Unless the area called Patagonia goes further north than I'm aware of. With the 100 metre sea level rise much of what is today the Amazon basin becomes a large shallow sea that may or may not be salty, kind of like what was there in the Miocene (where there were 15 metre caiman and 9 metre land-shark-crocs with dinosaur teeth around...). Might be interesting.

No, the caimans don't live in Patagonia, they live in the northern prairies, between the Patagonia and the jungle. They are called "Pampas".

revin
Jan 2 2016, 09:03 PM
Shagrats are not rats, that's just the name they were given because it sounds cool. They're descended from marmots, which are a type of ground squirrel.

That's why in spanish they are called "Marmópeles"
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El Dorito
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No, the caimans don't live in Patagonia, they live in the northern prairies, between the Patagonia and the jungle. They are called "Pampas".


Oh. I knew they lived in the pampas, I must have misread the question. Or maybe you forgot a full stop or comma, I'm not sure.

The projections for 100 metre sea level rise pretty much makes about a third of modern South America into shallow seas that might be either salty or brackish. There was a similar situation in the mid Miocene when Purrusaurus, Megapiranha and Argentavis were around. And all of those things were closely related to things around today, so there could be a sort of déjà vu... Or there might be gigantic swimming sloths fending off gigantic anacondas bigger than Titanoboa. Or nothing at all could happen and we could all be here thinking about the potential that isn't there.
Edited by El Dorito, Jan 3 2016, 09:48 PM.
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Nyarlathotep
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You do know it's now currently believed sea levels could only rise a maximum of 65m due to the limited amount of ice and the layout of the continents, right? Therefore it wouldn't be as extreme as suggested here.
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El Dorito
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Forbidden3
Jan 4 2016, 06:07 AM
You do know it's now currently believed sea levels could only rise a maximum of 65m due to the limited amount of ice and the layout of the continents, right? Therefore it wouldn't be as extreme as suggested here.
The sea level has already been discussed a while ago, and everything I've been able to find has said that it is a minimum of 70 metres, and a maximum of over 100 if thermal expansion is included ( and it isn't included in most estimates that are older than last year). One recent calculation, from August of last year in fact, puts sea level rising several metres over just the next century alone, even if CO2 emissions decline to pre industrial levels by 2040... I'm not making this up by the way.
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CaledonianWarrior96
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El Dorito
Jan 4 2016, 07:30 AM
Forbidden3
Jan 4 2016, 06:07 AM
You do know it's now currently believed sea levels could only rise a maximum of 65m due to the limited amount of ice and the layout of the continents, right? Therefore it wouldn't be as extreme as suggested here.
The sea level has already been discussed a while ago, and everything I've been able to find has said that it is a minimum of 70 metres, and a maximum of over 100 if thermal expansion is included ( and it isn't included in most estimates that are older than last year). One recent calculation, from August of last year in fact, puts sea level rising several metres over just the next century alone, even if CO2 emissions decline to pre industrial levels by 2040... I'm not making this up by the way.
I'd like to point out that sea levels could rise to over 100 metres but only if the continents spread further away from each other and it pushes up the sea floor. But since that takes millions of years I don't think it can happen in just one million years.

El Dorito
 
Oh. I knew they lived in the pampas, I must have misread the question. Or maybe you forgot a full stop or comma, I'm not sure.

The projections for 100 metre sea level rise pretty much makes about a third of modern South America into shallow seas that might be either salty or brackish. There was a similar situation in the mid Miocene when Purrusaurus, Megapiranha and Argentavis were around. And all of those things were closely related to things around today, so there could be a sort of déjà vu... Or there might be gigantic swimming sloths fending off gigantic anacondas bigger than Titanoboa. Or nothing at all could happen and we could all be here thinking about the potential that isn't there.
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That did happen but that wasn't really to do with rising sea levels but with the formation of the Andes which blocked rivers from draining into the Pacific and turning into a giant lake until it flowed the other way.
Edited by CaledonianWarrior96, Jan 4 2016, 08:06 AM.
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El Dorito
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That would be true in any other circumstance except the one we are in now... I'm well aware of the major effect plate tectonics has on rising sea levels in the long term. But what is happening now has almost nothing to do with any natural process. Really what is happening now is a first in the earths history.


The Miocene events were indeed caused by different processes to what I described, but the end result of the two different processes is a similar environment. If you could get a Purrusaurus and put it in the shallow sea that would form if the sea rose 100 metres, it probably wouldn't know the difference. (Also the shallow sea still forms at 60 metre sea level rise so there is really no way around it).
Edited by El Dorito, Jan 4 2016, 08:11 PM.
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revin
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I'd really like to see the sources for this information, seeing how controversial it has been with me and with others.
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My spec evo YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/speculativeevolution

With personal experience as a raven, I am a major proponent of conserving all corvid species at all costs. Save the endangered Mariana crow here.

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