Crustaceans: Crab
Mammals:
WeaselCrabPlants:
TreeGrass. Everything grass.Amphibians & Reptiles:
Unchanged because they are perfectCrabBirds:
360° around back to dinosaursFirst of all, avian dinosaurs are dinosaurs. Secondly, 360° doesn’t really make sense, probably they meant 180°. Finally, crab.Fungi: I shan’t speculate on the affairs of gods.
Moral of the story: You might not like it but decapods are peak animal evolution. All roads lead to crab.
Plants? Crabgrass.
Hotel? Trivago.
^ Winner of the thread.
Mammals: Anteater
Ants: Crab
Mammals: Crabeater
Misusing 360° where you should use 180° is a running joke
Ah good point. I’m more used to people doing it unintentionally.
Plant evolution is anything but stable. They keep evolving and devolving from weeds to trees and back every few 100 generations.
I don’t mind being a crab imagine not working. Just be crab.
Secondly, 360° doesn’t really make sense, probably they meant 180°.
It makes sense if you consider birds to be a mid-360° position of dinosaur evolution. They started at “classic” dinosaurs, pivoted to the avian variety, and will continue to pivot until they return to their classic form.
One fungus will eventually manage to mind control the crabs, like some already do with ants.
Hopefully, in a less destructive and more symbiotic manner. As much as I have a grudge against odorous house ants, I wouldn’t wish cordyceps on them, much less our future crab descendents.
360° makes sense if the starting point was dinosaurs. Birds would be the 180° mark.
Even grass evolves to tree - look at bamboo
Or palms.
Ring the crab bell
360° could be implying they are already that and that they’ll go through some cycle from being modern dinosaurs into future dinosaurs, but remaining much the same at the start and end positions. Or they were one of the many that never did understand angles and degrees during geometry 🤷♂️
you seem like an expert and I was actually wondering this yesterday while I was out on a walk cause I tend to think about silly things. So Theropods evolved into birds right? what about Sauropods or like Triceratops? or did they just go extinct
Groups never evolve into something. Species do.
Theropods are a group comprising a lot of species.
There was one species of theropod that evolved a few characterics we associate with birds. They evolved into a few species and some of them evolved into yet more species. They’re at the origin of the whole bird group.
See it like a tree with branches branching out with many branchss just getting cut short. One of that branching branch is the bird group, and it’s on the branching branch of theropod.
And yes, the branching branchs that are Sauropods and Ornithischia were all completely cut at the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago.
Thank you, appreciate the answer.
Yeah. It was admittedly a bit heartbreaking to discover that it appears that there are no extant descendents of any sauropod or ornithischia species. :(
These are actually questions that I’ve asked and done digging about in info sources on. I’m sad to report that it does appear that only descendents of theropod species appear to have survived. :(
Crustaceans: Extinct
Mammals: Extinct
Plants: Extinct
Amphibians & Reptiles: Extinct
Birds: Extinct
Fungi: Interstellar hive-mind
Even the gods fear the fungal network.
Fungus head out to seed another planet.
WAAAGH!
There’s a phenomenal documentary series called The Future Is Wild that speculates on this question.
https://youtube.com/@thefutureiswildofficial
https://www.thefutureiswild.com/
It has 3 parts, projecting to 5, 100 and 200 million years into the future.
The main theme is that niches determine attributes. So when an opportunity opens up, one species will evolve to fill that niche. For instance sea birds evolve into whales. Octopodes evolve into primates.
I loved this as a kid. It was one of a handful of really influential pieces of media from my childhood.
I’m actually surprised octopus haven’t evolved more than they already have. I suppose they would have to evolve skeletons to be able to survive on land so that’s probably what’s holding them back.
Hot take: the fungi will take over all existing animal and plant life, and create a whole biosphere of fungi. Fungi crustaceans, fungi mammals, fungi plants, fungi amphibians, fungi reptiles, fungi birds.
The fungi humans would have achieved world peace, because there’s no genders to create inequalities, and with spores flying everywhere, unwanted infidelity and physical differences are so common that anger and jealousy makes no sense.
Sure, but we will always have racism to fall back on
Plants keep evolving and devolving into trees every 100 generations.
Everything in the system evolves into a cloud of dust and gas about 27 million years from now.
That’s… that’s very soon. What do you know‽
“shan’t” is a great word
Evolution by Stephen Baxter (Wikipedia) was an interesting read.
Note: Baxter can be dry at times but i always enjoy the worlds he creates.I respect the hell out of Baxter, he’s a hard sci-fi artist. However, he’s so unrelentingly bleak I had to quit reading his stuff.
Can you share where you felt that way? Been a while since I’ve read him.
The midpoint to the end of Evolution, humans basically devolve and ultimately go extinct.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read anything by him as well.
I remember another book where artifically created people inside a dwarf star were dying due to solar harvesting, IIRC. I remember it being depressing but fascinating. Don’t remember how it ends.
Yeah, very fair. I guess i quite like the bleakness. I love dark and gritty stories.
He’s an incredible author, I’d put him up there with Alastair Reynolds. I just can’t handle it.
Raccoon also seems to be a pretty popular mammal convergance. Or generally small climbing quadruped with a varied diet and at least semi-functional hands.
Everything becomes crab on long enough timeline, Daniel-san. Be the lobster! Shell on. Shell off. Sift the floor.
We seemed to have it all hammered out. Love me some Cambrian explosion, wild shit! It was like the 1910-1920s for the industrial age. “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks!”
I had a dream a couple weeks ago where I was reading some news about penguins developing a language to talk to each other. And in the dream I was wondering if we as humans were in any way hindering the penguins’ capacity to evolve into a sentient species - then realized they were already so close to us. They have arms and legs, can use tools, talk with a structured language and everything - what kept them being labeled as plain animals if they did all that?
In the afternoon I suddenly remembered the dream and for a split second was kinda agreeing with my dream’s argument, until I realized the penguins in the dream were closer to Animal Crossing characters than to actually penguins.
We’ll just have to see what spots get opened up by lack of biodiversity to know for sure. There won’t be new crabs and weasels if there aren’t enough prey for them.
