The earth has a long life history of nearly 4 billion years. In such a long time, different eras have their own overlord creatures. It’s just that time is ruthless, it can erase all traces of the existence of living things. Although biological fossils can be stored for a very long time, they will also disappear if they are too long.
So what is the situation of life on Earth too long ago, and what domineering creatures have appeared? We don’t know now, and the earliest fossils of paleontology that we can explore and discover can only be traced back to 300 million years ago, and the fossils that were too long ago have basically been erased by time.
Therefore, scientists are now researching and exploring the development of the life history of the earth, basically starting from 300 million years ago. That era was the era when insects dominated the earth. The size of insects was unusually large. An ordinary dragonfly can reach a wingspan of 2 meters, a centipede. It is up to 3 meters in length.
After the end of the era of insects, a new overlord-level creature came into play, and that was the dinosaur, which is also the ancient creature that humans know the most about. Scientists have discovered a lot of dinosaur fossils from all over the world. This shows that dinosaurs were all over the world at that time, and they were truly dominant creatures. Moreover, dinosaurs were very large and were definitely the top creatures of the food chain. So that era was also called dinosaur era.
Dinosaurs dominated the earth for a relatively long time, up to 160 million years, this time can be much longer than human existence. A domineering race that can dominate the earth for 160 million years must be very remarkable, but even such a great dinosaur did not escape the fate of extinction in the end.
About 65 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers hit the earth. The huge impact caused a drastic change in the earth’s ecology. In this drastic change, the dinosaurs also became extinct and disappeared and completely withdrew from the stage of history. So are the dinosaurs really extinct in this extinction event? In this regard, the scientific community also has different views.
Some scientists believe that the dinosaurs may not be extinct. The surviving part of the dinosaurs finally evolved into a new species, one that continues to the present. Some people may say that in that mass extinction event, more than 80% of the earth’s species were extinct. As a large creature, dinosaurs are also the overlord of the earth, so naturally it is impossible to escape. What kind of dinosaurs will survive?
In fact, many people have a misunderstanding of dinosaurs, that is, they think that dinosaurs are huge terrestrial creatures like Tyrannosaurus rex. But in fact, dinosaurs are just a general term, not just a certain kind of dinosaur. It is equivalent to a biological family, such as the Ursidae subdivided by modern scientists. There are many types of bears in the Ursidae category.
In the same way, dinosaurs are just a general term, and there are many types of dinosaurs under this general term. Dinosaurs began to rise 230 million years ago during the Pangea separatist movement, and grew rapidly from the initial 5% to 95% later. That is to say, after the plate separatist movement ended, 95% of the creatures on the earth belonged to the family system of dinosaurs.
In the huge family of dinosaurs, in addition to the existence of terrestrial dinosaurs, there are also water dragons living in water and flying dragons in the sky. If you want to ask which of these three types of dinosaurs is more survivable, I believe many friends will answer: flying dragons.
That’s right, in any age of life, creatures with wings that can fly have a natural survival advantage. Some changes in land and sea basically have little effect on flying creatures. They can choose their habitat at any time. If they are terrestrial and marine organisms, it is not easy for them to migrate.
For example, from one piece of land to another piece of land, there is an ocean barrier in the middle, then the creatures on the land cannot migrate over. But for flying creatures, the ocean is unstoppable unless the distance is particularly long. Therefore, when the asteroid hits the earth, it triggers drastic changes in survival. The land and the sea are bound to be the most involved, and the dinosaurs that live on the land and the sea are naturally difficult to survive and can only be extinct in the end.
But for dinosaurs that have wings and can fly, they can fly to the sky for the first time, and then choose a safer place to live. Moreover, dinosaurs that can fly are naturally very fast. You must know that in the age of dinosaurs, although dinosaurs were all over the world, dinosaurs on different land were basically isolated and could not gather together.
And the only dinosaurs that can survive on all land may only be those that can fly. They rely on the advantage of speed and the advantage of unobstructed sky to survive in various dinosaur gathering places on the earth. Therefore, after the mass extinction, the land and sea are already earth-shaking, and the ecology has undergone drastic changes, but the impact on the air is relatively small.
Even if an asteroid hit the earth ushered in a drastic ecological change, then every corner of the earth cannot be very bad. If that is the case, the extinction rate of the earth’s creatures will be 100%, and there will be no fire for life. . Even if 20% of the living things are not extinct, it means that there is still a pure land on the earth at that time.
Perhaps only flying dinosaurs can find a piece of pure land. They can fly in the air, constantly searching for places that have not been affected by the mass extinction. After finding them, they can survive, waiting for the mass extinction to pass, and the ecology will recover again. Therefore, 65 million years ago, when the era of dinosaur extinction came, some flying dragons might have found the pure land, and then survived the mass extinction.
After the end of the mass extinction, the ecology of the earth repaired itself, and the earth returned to its former beautiful scene. It’s just that the earth’s ecological gadgets at this time have undergone tremendous changes like the ecology before the extinction, and the surviving creatures, including flying dragons, want to continue to survive in the new environment, and they must comply with the rules of nature. Evolve in a direction conducive to survival.
After the great extinction of the dinosaurs, the new ecological environment of the earth has a basic rule for biological requirements, that is, miniaturization. That is to say, the creatures should be reduced to miniaturization, and large numbers of giant creatures like dinosaurs are not allowed. Therefore, after the fifth mass extinction 65 million years ago, mammals came into play. Mammals are relatively small creatures. Compared with dinosaurs, they are basically small. This is nature’s choice.
Those surviving dinosaurs that were able to fly at this time only had to conform to the laws of nature and continue to evolve into small ones. With this generation of evolution, dinosaurs finally evolved into a certain modern species. Some people may say, among the many modern creatures, which one is the offspring of dinosaurs?
In fact, scientists have been exploring and researching this question. Although there is no definite answer yet, through a lot of research and analysis, scientists believe that the most likely descendants of dinosaurs in modern organisms should be the one commonly liked in the human world. Food: chicken.
That’s right, the chickens that we are very familiar with in society today may be modern creatures that have evolved step by step from non-extinct dinosaurs. I believe this result will surprise many friends. Unexpectedly, the dinosaurs that dominated the earth for 160 million years in 65 million years ended up becoming such a weak existence.
It may seem to many people that this is a tragedy, but from the perspective of the biological chain, we will find that the part of the flying dragons that have not been extinct are so correct. If the flying dragon evolved into other birds at that time, it might not be as weak as it is now, but the possibility of being extinct in modern times is very high.
We must know that after the birth of humans, as humans continue to grow stronger and stronger, human activities have caused many birds to continue to extinct. But there is only one creature that has not gone extinct, but has grown stronger and stronger. They are chickens. Chickens have become poultry, which is a meat that humans like very much. Therefore, we raise a lot of chickens. If you want to ask which animal has the largest number in the world, it is probably chickens.
In 2002, scientists made a general statistics. The number of chickens in the world is about 19 billion. This is only a conservative estimate. As long as the nature of human food-eating remains the same, and the character that likes to eat chickens remains the same, the number of chickens will not decrease, and the chicken population will continue. Even if all other creatures are extinct, as long as humans do not die, the chicken will not go extinct.
Let me ask, for the dinosaurs that are not extinct, is the evolutionary path chosen in the end right or wrong? From the perspective of race continuity, this is a very wise, very wise and great choice.