So Ive had a couple of outlandish ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now.This involves creatures that, in normal evolutionary circumstances couldnt plausibly evolve. However, one must know that not everything is impossible, and that the outlandish creatures that I will describe could in theory, evolve, just not in normal situations. Now, without further adue, lets begin. The first of these ideas is something that one might scoff at. Herbivorous carnosaurs. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But here would be their evolutionary history. Lets say some sort of megalomaniacal alien empire (like the Qu), in their various science experiments throughout the galaxy, transported a good number of a smaller carnosaur species (metricanthosaurus, neovenator, or concavenator, your pick) to a virgin planet with no competition, and plenty of non-tetrapod food. Natural selection would perform her wicked dance, and many of these small carnosaurs would die. However, there would be a couple of the smaller carnosaurs that would have adapted instead of dying out. As we all should know, being generalistic helps immensely in the long run, and this is no exception. Over the course of many hundreds of millions of years, the once medium sized carnosaurs that survived would become smaller, and more agile, more closely resembling their distant triassic ancestors than a conventional macropredatory dinosaur. This form would not be picky about what it eats, eating the many arthopods that dwell in the undergrowth and even some of the fish that live in fresh and saltwater. Twenty more million years pass, and this generalist form would be even smaller than the last. Cat sized, fuzzy, and omnivorous, this form has taken to include the odd ripe fruit and tender shoot in addition to its normal diet of insects. This generalistic form will continue to diversify, and over the course of another 60 million years, the descendants of this cat sized fluffball would evolve exponentially in the ecological vacuum. While some would take to going back to being macropredators, others would become obligate herbivores, grazing the low lying plant cover and browsing from the tops of trees with wide heads full of prosauropod-like teeth. Some would go to the seas, joining their distant relatives that went to the seas 120 million years before. Surely something like this is possible, but could it have actually happened? Probably not. Chances are these carnosaurs would have died out, and this experiment might have been a fluke! Regardless, it is still fun to discuss the what ifs of evolution. Next time we discuss how in the world could fully marine tetrapods could come back onto the land.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 15:04:40 +0000
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