Kuu

I am discussing this topic on another site

One woman thinks that if Mankind had not evolved the Earth would be a lovely pristine paradise today.

I suggested that if Homo Sapiens had not evolved than it is possible that some other creature would have stepped into the niche his non-existence would have left vacate.

Of course this probably would have been another hominoid but there are a few ideas I would like some suggestions on

I said that the creature that took the niche would have to be able to stand upright and have opposable thumbs. This woman disagreed saying that parrots could do wondrous things with their beaks and she doesn't see why opposable thumbs are needed by an intelligent creature. She also states that man could run faster if he was still on all fours etc

Any way what I would like to know is

a) If primates had not evolved (or had died out early in their existence) would another sort of mammal have evolved enough to step into mankind's niche and if so what mammal would it have likely to be descended from?

b) What if mammals had not evolved (or had died out early on)? Would have an highly intelligent non-mammal with opposable thumbs and walking upright evolved?

Spenser

All you can ask for is speculation making anything anyone says nothing more than science fiction. But I will say that opposable thumbs are a huge necessity for humans to get where they have gotten today. They enabled us to do this little thing called writing. Writing has allowed human knowledge as a whole to become a collective. Imagine if dolphins had opposable thumbs and something that didn't smudge when writing in water, it'd be a whole different world...

Jesse

No one really knows how likely the evolution of human-like intelligence would be if we could run the tape over...Gould thought it was a freak accident, while some other scientists think there has been a general trend towards increasing intelligence (measured in terms of 'encephalization') in the long term. Here's an interesting article which argues for the "no trend towards increasing intelligence" view:

http://history.nasa.gov/CP-2156/ch4.8.htm

Dale Russell is one of those who sees evidence of a trend, and who famously illustrated this idea with a speculative model of a "dinosauroid", which was his idea of what an intelligent descendent of a dinosaur called Troodon might look life if it had not become extinct...the evidence behind this speculation is touched upon briefly in this article:

Russell had a longer paper in which he presented the data that supported this trend, but I don't think it's available online.

Azathoth

I,for one,welcome our new dolphin overlords.

Classic Onion.

Roland98

And who can forget killer dolphins unleashed in Springfield

But other than that, I am of the opinion that we'd have no way to even guess at what species may have taken over had humans not come into the picture. Something with intelligence similar to ours? Maybe--but I find that a bit tough to believe. More fun to speculate is what will come after we completely destroy our planet and blow ourselves into oblivion.

Kevbo

Well, if this planet is coming to an end... so long, and thanks for all the fish.

butswana

Harry Harrison's "Eden" trilogy covers the intelligent dinosaur angle. No K/T event. Dinos got smart and had a freaky society/culture. Humans evolved too, but they still had little tails.

Valentine Pontifex

Assuming no other non-human intelligence evolved then Earth might be a "paradise" -- though that is really a stereotype of a perfectly harmonious nature -- but there would be no one to enjoy it. Paradise cannot exist without an intelligence to have appreciate it and some concept that it could be otherwise.