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Literature Text
At the end of the Cretaceous period clade Dinosauria, having ruled the world for 135 million years, was so diverse and so vigorous that it seemed nearly impossible to imagine a set of events that could wipe it out completely. It would have to take the perfect storm of catastrophic events to effect such a drastic change. At the very least an enormous basalt flow lasting millennia coupled with massive sea level change followed by a devastating asteroid impact scorching the Earth, filling the atmostphere with sulfur and carbon dioxide, throwing the global climate into chaos. That could, perhaps, do the job. You might be left with some remnant of Dinosauria, probably a portion of the flying maniraptorans, requiring less food and able to cover more ground more easily than all the others. But the giants that had ruled the Mesozoic era would be gone.
But what if the storm was less than perfect? What if the angle of the asteroid was different, or it veered off and hit the Pacific Ocean rather than the continental shelf? What if it had lost a part of its mass in a collision long before the impact? Would the devastation be complete then? Or would the post-apocalypse of the Paleocene see not just the return of amphibians, reptiles and mammals, but the new triumphant rise of Dinosauria from small feathered coelurosaurs, diminutive burrowing ornithopods, hardy basal marginocephalians and perhaps even some remnants of the older, grander taxa that somehow managed to shrug off the global catastrophe?
On this iteration of Earth, something like that occurred. Until then it was an exact mirror image of our home planet, but from that point onwards the two worlds have diverged ever further. It is not yet clear what exactly changed that prevented the complete eradication of non-avian dinosaurs, but it is certain that once they had made it through the hell that was the K/T extinction event, they once again multiplied and replenished the earth.
Much time has passed since. It is now the Ice Age, and it is the Age of the Dinosaurs.
But what if the storm was less than perfect? What if the angle of the asteroid was different, or it veered off and hit the Pacific Ocean rather than the continental shelf? What if it had lost a part of its mass in a collision long before the impact? Would the devastation be complete then? Or would the post-apocalypse of the Paleocene see not just the return of amphibians, reptiles and mammals, but the new triumphant rise of Dinosauria from small feathered coelurosaurs, diminutive burrowing ornithopods, hardy basal marginocephalians and perhaps even some remnants of the older, grander taxa that somehow managed to shrug off the global catastrophe?
On this iteration of Earth, something like that occurred. Until then it was an exact mirror image of our home planet, but from that point onwards the two worlds have diverged ever further. It is not yet clear what exactly changed that prevented the complete eradication of non-avian dinosaurs, but it is certain that once they had made it through the hell that was the K/T extinction event, they once again multiplied and replenished the earth.
Much time has passed since. It is now the Ice Age, and it is the Age of the Dinosaurs.
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Even though Dinosaurs of the Ice Age never really got off the ground before it got merged with the Speculative Dinosaur Project, I've kept updating the short introduction I had thought up for it. I've rewritten it in part or in completeness several times, meaning this is maybe the third or fourth fully revamped version. I guess I keep it around in case I for some reason might have a use for it. Say, If Spec should die before I do, and my health vastly improves in the future, I might even try to revive Dinosaurs of the Ice Age in the form of a book or an exhibition. Not likely, but who knows?
A detail worth noting about this intro: because it is a rewrite of a rewrite, it reflects how I would approach Dinosaurs of the Ice Age now, rather than how I approached it originally. Hence rather than a no-KT scenario it now starts with a milder KT-extinction that is survived by a number of small-bodied, hardy, adaptable taxa. As such, it would not e.g. have tyrannosaurs and therizinosaurs but rather maniraptorans convergent with them.
A detail worth noting about this intro: because it is a rewrite of a rewrite, it reflects how I would approach Dinosaurs of the Ice Age now, rather than how I approached it originally. Hence rather than a no-KT scenario it now starts with a milder KT-extinction that is survived by a number of small-bodied, hardy, adaptable taxa. As such, it would not e.g. have tyrannosaurs and therizinosaurs but rather maniraptorans convergent with them.
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This would be amazing. If only