65 million years ago, an asteroid about 10 kilometers in diameter fell to Earth, causing the most famous extinction event in history, the Cretaceous mass extinction. Ninety-five percent of the flora and fauna, including the dinosaurs, disappeared from the catastrophe, and the surviving mammals and birds became the rulers of the planet, multiplying and evolving to form the biosphere we now know as it.
Tips: Asteroid impact on Earth is one of the four great catastrophes in the world. Studies have shown that many extinction events in Earth's history were induced by small body impacts.
Until 6 million years ago, the first human species appeared, embarked on an evolutionary path to develop the brain, and in just over 5 million years, we humans, that is, Homo sapiens, stood out from a large number of human species and became the final winners, developing today's brilliant civilization.
Tips: The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (K-Pg event for short), because this extinction event completely destroyed non-avian dinosaurs, it is also commonly known as the "dinosaur mass extinction", which is also a large-scale species extinction event in the history of the earth.
This makes one wonder why human species evolved into higher intelligent beings in such a short period of time, while the dinosaurs that ruled the earth for 170 million years did not succeed?
Life has no direction
First of all, we need to clarify the question, is the ultimate goal of life not higher wisdom?
As long as you carefully analyze all kinds of creatures on the earth today, you will find that the direction of evolution of all organisms is not high intelligence, and everyone's goal is actually the same, and it is enough to survive and multiply. As for how to survive, the decisive role is your environment, as long as you can adapt to the environment you are in and continue to evolve, you are a successful species.
Tips: Species, or "species" for short, are the basic unit and core of taxonomic research. It is a group of individuals who can mate and reproduce, but cannot mate with other organisms, cannot have sexual intercourse, or the hybrids produced after mating can no longer reproduce.
Bacteria, for example, as the world's first life, this population has existed on Earth for 3.6 billion years, and to this day, it is still the most diverse and abundant organism in the world. In order to survive better and adapt to the environment, bacteria are constantly evolving, and their footprints are spread around any corner of the world. They can even adapt to the high temperatures and pressures of submarine volcanoes, converting sulfides that can poison other organisms into nutritious stomachs.
In addition, they can also hitchhike with other creatures and become probiotics to coexist peacefully with us, mutually beneficial. So don't look at bacteria that don't have a sense of presence and don't have a smart brain. It is much more adaptable than humans. It is conceivable that no matter how the world's climate changes, bacteria will survive until the destruction of the earth.
Tips: Bacteria, refers to one of the main taxa of organisms, belonging to the bacterial domain. It is also the most abundant of all living things, with an estimated total of about 5×10^30. The shape of bacteria is quite diverse, mainly spherical, rod-shaped, and spiral-shaped.
A similar example is the sea spider, a creature that lives deep in the oceanbed and has survived 500 million years and experienced mass extinctions caused by several geological disasters, but there has been little change in morphology. Incredibly, this simple arthropod has no natural enemies at all. In addition to its mouth, it is a leg, and even in order to save space, it has grown its digestive system in the leg. It's all about making yourself unpalatable, nutritious, and difficult to swallow. It has taken 500 million years to prove that as long as you have enough waste, no one can take advantage of you.
Why haven't sea spiders changed much in 500 million years? The reason is also obvious, there is no motivation to evolve without worry. Ninety percent of its contemporaries were extinct, and from that point of view, sea spiders were successful enough.
Tips: Sea spiders, also called all-legged insects, resemble spiders, hence the name sea spider. Like spiders and horseshoe crabs, sea spiders belong to the arthropod crayon, inhabiting the seashore, often creeping on seaweed or under rocks. They exist in almost every ocean.
Presumably, by this point, everyone has understood the relationship between environment and evolution. Sometimes it is not wisdom that decides who rules the earth, but the environment. So next, let's compare what kind of environmental changes dinosaurs and humans experienced when they dominated the earth, as long as we can understand this problem, all the mysteries will be solved.
How did dinosaurs become overlords?
250 million years ago, due to the influence of plate movement, the original scattered land land re-aggregated to form the huge Pangea Continent. Because the interior of Pangea is far from the ocean, most of the land at this time is dominated by deserts and the Gobi. Plants are basically drought-tolerant ferns, while animals are dominated by drought-tolerant pseudo-crocodile reptiles. This four-legged reptile carnivore was a land overlord in the Triassic, an early dinosaur that began to appear 230 million years ago, and a prey in the eyes of pseudo-crocodiles.
Tips: Triassic, a geological epoch dating from 250 million to 200 million BC, is located between the Permian and Jurassic and is the first epoch of the Mesozoic Era. The beginning and end of the Triassic period were marked by an extinction event.
At this time, the life of dinosaurs was miserable, and there were three main types, namely Archaeopteraurus, Arauerosaurus and Herreraosaurus and so on. They did not have a large size, and could only inhabit the southern tip of the warm-climate Gondwana continent, which later split to form what is now South America and Africa. If the terrestrial climate had been so arid forever, dinosaurs would not have been able to rise, and might even have evolved in a drought-tolerant direction to become bipeds with the appearance of lizards.
Then the turnaround occurred.
The movement of the Earth's crust caused changes in ancient ocean currents, and wet sea breezes from the Paleo Pacific Ocean entered Pangea, and parts of the land began to become wet. As the Cinmelya and other plates drifted north, orogenic activity led to frequent volcanic eruptions, eventually triggering a volcanic eruption that completely rewrote the Earth's climate, and The Langlia erupted.
Tips: Volcanic eruption is a peculiar geological phenomenon, a manifestation of the movement of the Earth's crust and one of the strongest manifestations of the Earth's internal thermal energy on the surface. It is the release of magma and other ejecta from the crater to the surface in a short period of time.
These massive volcanic eruptions release large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere. Too much carbon dioxide not only acidifies the oceans, but also leads to the mass extinction of marine life. The ensuing greenhouse effect also caused Pangea to experience an unprecedented heavy rainstorm event. Global temperatures have risen by 6 to 8 degrees, and accelerated ocean evaporation has brought super rainfall to the entire continent for more than 2 million years, known as the Carney Period flood event.
The ancestors of the dinosaurs, the main dragon creatures, look forward to their own spring. Abundant precipitation made coniferous trees dominate the Pangea continent, and patches of forests began to appear. The beaked dragons and diodonates, which originally depended on ferns, withdrew from the stage of history. The main dragon creatures began to spread throughout the Pangu Continent with their physical advantages such as bipedal walking, high respiratory efficiency and excellent vision.
Tips: Taiga is a general term for various types of forests composed of coniferous trees. It includes evergreen and deciduous, hardy, drought-tolerant and warm-loving, wet-loving and other types of coniferous pure forests and mixed forests. It is mainly composed of some hardy tree species of the genus spruce, fir, larch and pine.
According to statistics, before the Carni flood event, Pangea was occupied by pseudo-crocodiles and theropods, and dinosaurs accounted for only about 3% of all land creatures. After the end of the Carni flood, the dinosaur population exploded, accounting for between 50 and 90 percent of all land creatures. By this time, the natural enemy of the dinosaurs, the pseudo-crocodile creatures, had disappeared.
As temperatures rise, vegetation around the globe grows wildly, and dinosaurs without natural enemies enter a golden age of evolution. The main dragon creatures continue to evolve, forming a huge family of dinosaurs, and the abundant plants not only provide more nutrients, but also increase the oxygen content of the earth, on this basis, the size of the dinosaurs is getting larger and larger, and there are giant dinosaurs with a length of more than ten meters, and the Tyrannosaurus rex we know is also among them.
Tips: Dinosaurs are a group of lizards that lived mainly in the Mesozoic Era, evolving from marine life to fish and then reptiles about 200-500 million years ago.
Since the environment at this time is suitable for the survival of giant organisms, the direction of evolution has become who is bigger and stronger, who can dominate the land. For example, the earthquake dragon that lived in the late Jurassic Period, its body length of more than 40 meters, weighing about 22 tons, is the largest dinosaur on land. Interestingly, its head is a bit too small compared to its body. Therefore, the earthquake dragon is slow to move, and will not take care of its offspring, only eating some fresh and tender plants for food.
It can be said that the dinosaurs became the overlords on land, in fact, they were stained with the light of the climate. If it were not for the Carny flood event that helped them eliminate natural enemies and expand their range of activities, dinosaurs would have been difficult to succeed. So for a long time after that, the evolution direction of dinosaurs has always been body size, not intelligence. It was not until the late Cretaceous period, when global temperatures gradually dropped, that small dinosaurs began to evolve to higher intelligence.
Tips: Seismosaurus, meaning "lizard that shakes the earth", is one of the larger plant-eating dinosaurs, a synonym for the Lepidoptera family. It lived in the late Jurassic period.
Wounded Tooth Dragon is one of the best. It lived in the late Cretaceous period, 75 to 65 million years ago, was only two meters long, but had the largest proportion of dinosaur heads, so it is considered the most intelligent dinosaur. Some scholars believe that its level of intelligence should be comparable to that of ostriches. Even more intelligent, as it has evolved into a social animal, plus the toothed dragon preyed on birds, lizards, and small mammals. Such animals move quickly, are good at hiding, and do not have developed sensory organs, making it difficult to hunt successfully.
Tips: Ostrich generally refers to the African ostrich. The African ostrich Struthio camelus, belonging to the ostrich family ostriches, is the largest bird in the world, reaching adults up to 2.5 meters tall.
Many scholars believe that if it were not for the asteroid hitting the earth 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs would still be the masters of the earth. And the wounded tooth dragon is likely to eventually evolve higher intelligence and become the overlord of the earth. As for mammals, they may always have to live in caves like rats, hiding from dinosaurs by lying day and night. As for primates, there may not even be a chance to appear.
In contrast, looking at the evolutionary history of human beings, increasing intelligence is also a helpless move under the change of environment.
How did humans become overlords?
Since the extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals have finally lost their natural enemies and began to spread widely on land, eventually evolving into a huge family. Primates thus came to the stage of history 50 million years ago, and these proto-monkey creatures have evolved over a long period of time to become the ancestors of primates such as lemurs, tarsiers, golden snub-nosed monkeys, and baboons. Ape creatures appeared 30 million years ago and became the common ancestor of modern chimpanzees and other apes, that is, forest apes.
Tips: Australopithecus australothecus, australopithecus, is an extinct genus of humans. It is a late representative of a person who is in the process of being formed. It lived about 5.5 million to 1.3 million years ago.
Originally, the forest ape was just an ape creature that lived in the forest, not much different from the skeleton structure of modern chimpanzees. But 12 million years ago, crustal movements gradually created the Great Rift Valley. The dense jungle was replaced by an endless grassland. The forest apes here have undergone a long period of adaptation and became australopithecus that could walk upright on two feet about 5 million years ago. Their life changed from picking fruit from trees to digging plant tubers on the ground.
At this time, the overlord of the land is a fierce carnivorous mammal. In order to survive better, Australopithecus began to live in groups, gradually developing social attributes. One of them went extinct 1.5 million years ago. The other evolved 2.5 million years ago into capable people who could make rough stone tools. They were the first humanoid creatures on Earth, and their ability to make tools was discovered, so that our ancestors could live an omnivorous life of hunting small animals.
Tips: The Great Rift Valley, located in eastern Africa, is the largest fault zone on the world's continent. From the satellite photos, it looks like a huge scar, so it is called the "Scar of the Earth".
However, what really put humanoid creatures on the path of developing intelligence was an important invention, that is, the use of fire.
2 million years ago, when the Quaternary ice age rewrote the Earth's climate and large icebergs appeared around the world, Homo erectus began to appear, and they knew how to use spears to hunt large prey. Their excellent endurance allows them to chase large herbivores to exhaustion just by driving away their prey. What's more, they learned to use fire and ate cooked food. Cooked food is of great significance to human organisms, after the roasted protein is easily digested and absorbed, the burden on the digestive system of human animals is reduced, and it begins to degenerate, especially the degeneration of teeth leaves room for brain development.
Tips: From the volume of the cranial cavity, the brain capacity of modern humans can reach 1500ml, while the apes are only 400ml to 500ml, the Javan apes are about 900ml, the average brain volume of Homo sapiens is about 1400ml to 1600ml, and the Neanderthal caveman can reach 1200ml to 1750ml.
Homo erectus became the world's first primate not to forage all day, and they later left Africa and left their footprints on Eurasia. For example, the Beijingers and Yuanmou people in China are all a branch of Homo erectus. Even subspecies such as Neanderthals evolved in Europe, but before the end of the Quaternary Ice Age, Homo sapiens who remained on the continent to perform Homo erectus eventually became the winner of the genus Homo sapiens, spread throughout the world. Especially after the end of the ice age 10,000 years ago, the world warmed up, and we began to develop agriculture and enter the era of civilization by relying on angiosperms.
Tips: In 1921, Chinese archaeologists found a complete fossil of the skull of an ancient human in Zhoukoudian, ancient Beijing, which is the Beijinger who shook the world. Beijingers are Homo erectus, using natural fire and making tools.
From apes that only pick fruit from trees to eat, to learning to use tools and barbecues, to developing wisdom and civilization. Environmental change has always been accompanied by left and right and never left.
epilogue
After analyzing a series of evolutionary processes experienced by dinosaurs and humanoids, I believe we have solved the mystery. Environmental change is the first driving force behind biological evolution. If humanoid creatures, like dinosaurs, debut is the peak, then no matter how long it takes, we humans cannot appear.
Tips: The four great inventions are the fruits of ancient Chinese innovation and scientific technology, including papermaking, compass, gunpowder, and printing. The four inventions played a huge role in promoting the political, economic and cultural development of ancient China.
In just 5 million years, we have experienced many more challenges and environmental changes than dinosaurs, which has allowed us to adapt incomparably strongly and successfully develop our brains. Having wisdom is never inevitable, we are just lucky enough.