The End of the Metazoic
I have been asked about this, since this is my project, I think it'd be important to come up with a sort of ending to the Metazoic era. Some imaginary scenario if you will. It's a sad subject to think about. We all know by now what killed off the dinosaurs. Well, we seem to have some pretty accurate speculations. So what happens at the end of the Metazoic? Well, we need a beginning. Imagine a world in which we are missing. Humans have killed themselves off by cutting down forests, overpopulation, overuse of natural resources. Face it, our extinction is pretty much inevitable! Humans don't know it. Unfortunately nowadays, people are getting paid good money to overpopulate. People on welfare have more and more kids because it means getting more money from the government. People like the Duggars (19 kids and counting) get paid a lot of money because they keep on having kids and TV stations like TLC will always pay them well to bring cameras into their home and film these big families. People like that. And they are not the only ones. Look at John and Kate Plus 8, they got paid $10,000 a week to be filmed. People are interested in those kind of shows. It encourages more and more people to have large amounts of kids because shows like this appeal to them. But what people like this don't realize is that these kids soon grow and need space of their own. Thus cutting into forests and not only pushing other animals out of their homes, but also every tree that is cut down takes away the chance of developing new oxygen for the atmosphere. Trees clear the air, the less trees and the more people, the less our chances of survival. But enough about that! That's a different blog!
Anyway, in this world humans have become extinct completely. It takes several million years to clear the air. Thus the Metazoic begins. It begins modestly, because smaller animals need less oxygen to survive. I figure a good 14-20 million years for the air to clear. Small deer, antelope, rabbits, rats, mice, foxes, and even cats are running around along the ground. Cats hunt the rats and mice, foxes learn to hunt prey like the small deer. On the other side of the world, small antelope like the klipspringer and dik-dik are getting along without competition from larger species. The panthers have all died off. Elephant shrews have emerged, and they don't compete much with the small antelope because they have a wider range of food they will consume, like insects as well as vegetation. They have not completely become extinct because humans died off before that could happen. They learn to walk on their hind legs, giving them another great advantage that most antelope do not have. Now, they can feed off bushes and shrubs, and later on, trees. From here, the animal has 2 options: either they develop a long, thick tail to support their upright posture, or lose the tail altogether and develop humanoid-like buns. Keeping the tail is a greater advantage so that's what happens. Thus, the therapeds, or thicktails, are born. They develop a whole new group endemic to the Metazoic: the Trelatebrates.
Mammals in this age are different than they are in the Cenozoic. In fact, they probably deserve to have a totally different class of their own. Like modern mammals, they do produce milk for their young, and secrete it out of specialized glands, or mammae. But unlike modern mammals, the males all have no external scrotum. Either the testes have moved up into the pelvic cavity, or they simply cling closer to the body. There is also no external penis. Most Metazoic mammals have only 2 vents in the males, and 3 in the females, but in the case of the Trelatebrates, there are 3 in both sexes. Therefore externally it'd be very hard for us to tell the two sexes apart. When Africa collides with Europe, the descendants of antelope, elephant shrews and bushbabies all push thier way out of Africa, to land that they have never set foot before. They learn to deal with the cooler weather of Europe and the USSR, and migrate to other continents like Asia, India and ultimately Australia. Some species go further. The predecessors of the therapeds, the "pig-horses", have become highly adaptable, and even head north and cross the now connecting land bridge from Mongolia, to Japan (now a part of the Asian continent) and into Alaska. Thus heading down to North America where they settle and become the therapeds. Sometimes, while the land bridge from Alaska and Asia is still there, some species migrate back to the Old World. By the time the therapeds have become the Deinognathids, the land bridge connecting Alaska to Mongolia has corroded away. Some Deinognathids made it before that happens, and take over the Old World as top predators. They followed the migrating herds of therapeds, deer and antelope to get there. All this is within a space of 35 million years after man. The Old World in fact was good for the Deinognathids. They had little to no competition from large mongooses or Ailurocyonids. Those that were there got pushed out by the Deinognathids that invaded the Old World. They already fed on the deer and antelope that led them to this section of the world, and they found other varieties of food as well. Even a small deinognathid like Paricteria, was capable of bringing down and killing an animal like a deer or antelope.
Deinognathids did good in both sides of the world. They have a high reproductive rate, they are intelligent, and pick up on things very quickly, and most species are bipeds. The bipedal posture gives mammals a much greater advantage over quadrupeds. So the bipeds took over quickly. This is the reason deinognathids will win over barofelids and ailurocyonids as top predators. Descendants of felines never learn to walk in a bipedal posture for longer than a few inches. So the felines and their descendants eventually die out. But for their time on Earth, felines did evolve to hunt rodents, which also later became bigger, as did the felines, which led to the evolution of the Barofelids and Ailurocyonids, which are the Metazoic's "big cats".
In the Metazoic, some continents got larger and some more islands form. What I always call San Diego Is. is made up of the US states of Washington, Oregon and California, all the way to Baja California. Volcanic activity caused it to separate from the rest of the North American continent. Thus making it an island. Many animals were in that portion of the continent when it split apart. Some were gentle plant-eaters or omnivores, and others were meat eaters. Even some cats were present. Before the end of the Metazoic, San Diego Island actually dissipates and sinks back into the sea. So do the Batavian Islands. Thus their unique cargo of animals either migrates back to the mainland USA, or finds a distant land elsewhere, or dies off with the islands. Some peaks of tall mountains remain for several more million years, but are gone before the end of the Metazoic.
I figure the Metazoic era to last as much as 100 million years after man. At that time, I am figuring perhaps a surge in volcanic activity will cause the extinction of the mammals of the Metazoic. Perhaps Yellowstone will erupt. This would cause local and global catastrophe. Imagine if for a thousand years, Old Faithful failed to erupt. All that pressure builds up underneath. A thousand years worth of pressure in the ground is a lot of pressure! Earthquakes soon pile up and warn the animals of an impending disaster. Animals can take the warning, and migrate to safer places, but with this being a major eruption, where could they all go? Earthquakes continue to mount up, all leading to the final event. Finally, after many years of inactivity, the volcano awakens and explodes. Billions and billions and billions of tons of ash, rock and poisonous gases leak into the atmosphere. It is obvious the animals nearby were taken in the blast, but what about animals from other continents and the oceans? Well, with a thousand years of pressure built up underneath Yellowstone, it build up enough power to blacken the skies all over the world for as long as 10 years. In this time, plants die off, then the animals that feed on the plants starve to death. While predators last a little bit longer, feeding on the abundance of dead plant-eating animals, eventually their food supply will run thin. This will then cause the extinction of the predatory animals, which will be the last to die off.
The main animals that will make it past this event are the smaller animals, the ones who need less food, and go underground and hibernate when times get tough. But few mammals can hibernate as long as 10 years! So most mammals die off. Some, such as mice, may make it through. They are small, and need only tiny amounts of water, and they can feed on anything! So mice are likely to make it through even without hibernating. And smaller animals that feed on them, such as small predators, will also make it through. When the skies clear, we would see less in the way of mammals, and more in the way of open ecological spaces, waiting for something to fill in those spaces. What will be next? Perhaps the archosaurs? Maybe an age of birds? Or maybe some other little creature, maybe completely unknown to us, will evolve in the Metazoic to run through the grass, and wait their turn to take over the world. Perhaps? We won't really know until that time comes.
Anyway, in this world humans have become extinct completely. It takes several million years to clear the air. Thus the Metazoic begins. It begins modestly, because smaller animals need less oxygen to survive. I figure a good 14-20 million years for the air to clear. Small deer, antelope, rabbits, rats, mice, foxes, and even cats are running around along the ground. Cats hunt the rats and mice, foxes learn to hunt prey like the small deer. On the other side of the world, small antelope like the klipspringer and dik-dik are getting along without competition from larger species. The panthers have all died off. Elephant shrews have emerged, and they don't compete much with the small antelope because they have a wider range of food they will consume, like insects as well as vegetation. They have not completely become extinct because humans died off before that could happen. They learn to walk on their hind legs, giving them another great advantage that most antelope do not have. Now, they can feed off bushes and shrubs, and later on, trees. From here, the animal has 2 options: either they develop a long, thick tail to support their upright posture, or lose the tail altogether and develop humanoid-like buns. Keeping the tail is a greater advantage so that's what happens. Thus, the therapeds, or thicktails, are born. They develop a whole new group endemic to the Metazoic: the Trelatebrates.
Mammals in this age are different than they are in the Cenozoic. In fact, they probably deserve to have a totally different class of their own. Like modern mammals, they do produce milk for their young, and secrete it out of specialized glands, or mammae. But unlike modern mammals, the males all have no external scrotum. Either the testes have moved up into the pelvic cavity, or they simply cling closer to the body. There is also no external penis. Most Metazoic mammals have only 2 vents in the males, and 3 in the females, but in the case of the Trelatebrates, there are 3 in both sexes. Therefore externally it'd be very hard for us to tell the two sexes apart. When Africa collides with Europe, the descendants of antelope, elephant shrews and bushbabies all push thier way out of Africa, to land that they have never set foot before. They learn to deal with the cooler weather of Europe and the USSR, and migrate to other continents like Asia, India and ultimately Australia. Some species go further. The predecessors of the therapeds, the "pig-horses", have become highly adaptable, and even head north and cross the now connecting land bridge from Mongolia, to Japan (now a part of the Asian continent) and into Alaska. Thus heading down to North America where they settle and become the therapeds. Sometimes, while the land bridge from Alaska and Asia is still there, some species migrate back to the Old World. By the time the therapeds have become the Deinognathids, the land bridge connecting Alaska to Mongolia has corroded away. Some Deinognathids made it before that happens, and take over the Old World as top predators. They followed the migrating herds of therapeds, deer and antelope to get there. All this is within a space of 35 million years after man. The Old World in fact was good for the Deinognathids. They had little to no competition from large mongooses or Ailurocyonids. Those that were there got pushed out by the Deinognathids that invaded the Old World. They already fed on the deer and antelope that led them to this section of the world, and they found other varieties of food as well. Even a small deinognathid like Paricteria, was capable of bringing down and killing an animal like a deer or antelope.
Deinognathids did good in both sides of the world. They have a high reproductive rate, they are intelligent, and pick up on things very quickly, and most species are bipeds. The bipedal posture gives mammals a much greater advantage over quadrupeds. So the bipeds took over quickly. This is the reason deinognathids will win over barofelids and ailurocyonids as top predators. Descendants of felines never learn to walk in a bipedal posture for longer than a few inches. So the felines and their descendants eventually die out. But for their time on Earth, felines did evolve to hunt rodents, which also later became bigger, as did the felines, which led to the evolution of the Barofelids and Ailurocyonids, which are the Metazoic's "big cats".
In the Metazoic, some continents got larger and some more islands form. What I always call San Diego Is. is made up of the US states of Washington, Oregon and California, all the way to Baja California. Volcanic activity caused it to separate from the rest of the North American continent. Thus making it an island. Many animals were in that portion of the continent when it split apart. Some were gentle plant-eaters or omnivores, and others were meat eaters. Even some cats were present. Before the end of the Metazoic, San Diego Island actually dissipates and sinks back into the sea. So do the Batavian Islands. Thus their unique cargo of animals either migrates back to the mainland USA, or finds a distant land elsewhere, or dies off with the islands. Some peaks of tall mountains remain for several more million years, but are gone before the end of the Metazoic.
I figure the Metazoic era to last as much as 100 million years after man. At that time, I am figuring perhaps a surge in volcanic activity will cause the extinction of the mammals of the Metazoic. Perhaps Yellowstone will erupt. This would cause local and global catastrophe. Imagine if for a thousand years, Old Faithful failed to erupt. All that pressure builds up underneath. A thousand years worth of pressure in the ground is a lot of pressure! Earthquakes soon pile up and warn the animals of an impending disaster. Animals can take the warning, and migrate to safer places, but with this being a major eruption, where could they all go? Earthquakes continue to mount up, all leading to the final event. Finally, after many years of inactivity, the volcano awakens and explodes. Billions and billions and billions of tons of ash, rock and poisonous gases leak into the atmosphere. It is obvious the animals nearby were taken in the blast, but what about animals from other continents and the oceans? Well, with a thousand years of pressure built up underneath Yellowstone, it build up enough power to blacken the skies all over the world for as long as 10 years. In this time, plants die off, then the animals that feed on the plants starve to death. While predators last a little bit longer, feeding on the abundance of dead plant-eating animals, eventually their food supply will run thin. This will then cause the extinction of the predatory animals, which will be the last to die off.
The main animals that will make it past this event are the smaller animals, the ones who need less food, and go underground and hibernate when times get tough. But few mammals can hibernate as long as 10 years! So most mammals die off. Some, such as mice, may make it through. They are small, and need only tiny amounts of water, and they can feed on anything! So mice are likely to make it through even without hibernating. And smaller animals that feed on them, such as small predators, will also make it through. When the skies clear, we would see less in the way of mammals, and more in the way of open ecological spaces, waiting for something to fill in those spaces. What will be next? Perhaps the archosaurs? Maybe an age of birds? Or maybe some other little creature, maybe completely unknown to us, will evolve in the Metazoic to run through the grass, and wait their turn to take over the world. Perhaps? We won't really know until that time comes.
Comments
Post a Comment