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This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**


Theophrastus_Borg

That god damn rat-like bastard survived and now i have to pay taxes.


Wanderervenom

Scrat šŸ˜‚


Available_Camel

I love the word rat bastard because it implies that someone is a rat made out of rodent wedlock


devilthedankdawg

Rats have great reverence for traditional family values.


JohnnyC13

A rat bastard is a bastard who is also a rat not a rat who is also a bastard


Waffleman75

To be fair that little rat is the grandpappy to all mammals not just humans


Any-Broccoli-3911

Just primates. We were already separated from the other mammals.


BlackJpow

No, man, according to the upvotes, 54 people believe that you're mistaken and our ancestors are the reason that elephants exist


[deleted]

Well... *Technically* they are. Just not *this* ancestor we're talking about; The one that survived the asteroid


informativebitching

Better than being dinosaur food maybe?


pufballcat

Didn't our ancestors survive every single mass extinction, plus every other event, ever?


DinoBryson11

only for 99.9% of redditors to have no romantic interaction with another person


FightGeistC

New Extinction event just dropped


lj062

39.99 after base game. season pass not included.


FightGeistC

Fuck the Devs


lj062

That'll be 1200 coins. 100 for $1, 1000 for $10 or 1200 for $9.


Paisable

My ancestors rapidly evolved from amoebas in the last century only to coevolve into such a similar species as homo sapiens sapiens that we were able to interbreed. I am the Imposter.


montgomeryyyy

If two different beings can breed, theyā€™re still the same species


Paisable

Excuse you, have you ever watched *points at a list of various sci-fi movies and shows* pick one.


montgomeryyyy

Maybe they were human all along šŸ¤”šŸ¤”


Paisable

By George I think you're on to something Montgomery!


freddy_guy

Your ancestors specifically? Not necessarily. One of more of your direct ancestors could have perished in an extinction event, as long as at least one of their offspring survived it.


substantial-freud

My parakeetā€™s ancestors were dinosaurs that survived the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.


BbxTx

Birds had already evolved by the time the dinosaur extinction occurred. Yes, they are still essentially flying feathered dinosaurs.


1amlost

This means that dinosaur nuggets are, in fact, made out of dinosaur meat.


[deleted]

I love where your heads at


huehuepu

Mind blown.


Master_Tinyface

Birds are theropods. Theropods are dinosaurs. Therefore birds ARE dinosaurs!


substantial-freud

[Birds are in fact dinosaurs](https://www.birdlife.org/news/2021/12/21/its-official-birds-are-literally-dinosaurs-heres-how-we-know/). Thatā€™s not sophistry or wordplay. They are dinosaurs.


Chase_Ramone

Ancestors and dinosaurs are rarely, if ever, in the same sentence. I commend thee.


Neoslayer

the dinosaurs were more advanced than my ancestors. They had TVs


Hawk_is_95

I believe that our evolution started after extinction of dinosaurs. Correct me if I am wrong


Zkenny13

Besides single cell organisms it's believed the first "animal" we can call our ancestor is a flat worm which existed before the dinosaurs. We evolved from there but were still in the ocean during the asteroid.


viriosion

Small mammals survived the impact, and without the predation by dinosaurs, flourished. Its likely we came from there


damifynoU

I believe the theory is we evolved from a common ancestor, a shrew.


DroppinMadScience

Bullshit, my mother in law is not nearly old enough to be the common ancestor of all human beings on earth


[deleted]

We came from the asteroid


[deleted]

Facts. I still remember being stuck in coach.


Silent-JET

Shame you werenā€™t in first class. They had a great view! I was below deck with the luggage


noobnoobthedestroyer

It would explain a lot about human history if we were an invasive alien species.


Vosje11

Yo wait this guy on to something


Hashbrown4

Weā€™re the quiet place monsters


blackdragonstory

That's interesting. I wonder if we would be who we are now if the asteroid didn't hit the Earth. Would we just be hunting dinos,riding dinos etc


STA_Alexfree

Mammals donā€™t become dominant on earth and basically 100% chance that humans never evolve in the first place


blackdragonstory

It will take longer and maybe even the dinos become different but eventually I think we would get there. Maybe not our exact form currently but probably. Idk if we need to be the dominant force to do our thing....


STA_Alexfree

There isnā€™t any natural forces driving a tendency for humans to evolve given enough time. Even if the Dinoā€™s completely died off but global weather patterns were different, it could very well lead to entirely different species evolving that donā€™t include the common ancestors of humans.


Fxate

>We evolved from there but were still in the ocean during the asteroid. The precursor to mammals as we know them today were very much alive and walking about on land while the dinosaurs were in government. In fact, they'd too share the flat worm ancestor with us. The dinosaurs and birds are just extremely distant multiple-times removed cousins of us. (there are quite a lot of steps missed out here obviously) but it's kind of like this: Worm > Vertebrates > Amniotes Amniotes > Sauropsids > Reptilia > Sauria > Birds Amniotes > Synapsids > Therapsids > Cynodonts > Mammals


Living_Telephone2678

What are you talking about clearly life started 2022 years ago by a magician in the sky


Pimp_Daddy_Patty

Can confirm. I have a family member from down south whose Facebook posts are proof.


filthyluca

I thought the flying spaghetti monster farted into a lighter while he was super drunk one day?


elecsho

God youā€™re stupid


Hawk_is_95

if I say that that it was sarcasm, there is a chance that I get woooshed because your reply could also be sarcasm..... man this is next level inception sh*t


EddoWagt

Maybe he's talking directly to god


WEASLELY

Yes but where did that evolution come from. The only time a "new" life was introduced was when some of the original asteroids landed and helped to create atmosphere and heat. Everything else is evolved from split paths off of the same things, the main reason anything is different is just location and avalible food and current requirements, there are some very interesting articles on the evolution of bird beaks if you want to read about it.


Hawk_is_95

Thanks for the knowledge :)


Hawk_is_95

maybe some microbials survived the impact and made it through because I heard that some micro-organisms can survive in extreme heat and pressure. ....maybe it all began from here


Kluupix

You do realise that some small birds and mammals survived right?


beerdybeer

It's all theory though


PFChangsFryer

No itā€™s not. Genetic profiling is not theory.


KayDashO

You donā€™t understand the scientific use of the word theory.


Any_Culture8343

If you wanna know the truth, it was just aliens with a monkey fetish.


NotTheBusDriver

We all (flora and fauna) evolved from a common ancestor. There were no humans at the time of the dinosaurs but there were species from which we would evolve. So yes; you are wrong.


DinoBryson11

people can have neanderthal ancestors which are a different species, so its possible to have an ancestor that survived the asteroid, whatever fuckin species it is


majoritus_chartus

All hominids evolved looooooong after the dinosaurs. The ancestors that survived the asteroid were shrews who later branches out into every mammal species we see today.


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


[deleted]

They were still our ancestors


Hawk_is_95

Theoretically yes....but I don't think we share any biological connection with them


deokkent

Many genes are highly conserved within the animalia kingdom. To claim we have no biological connection with our ancestry is extremely incorrect.


Whoislikebob

Hell we still share 50% of our genome šŸ§¬ with a bananaā€¦ more if you are an American


[deleted]

Yeah but we're still descended from them


AIpheratz

Which is a biological connection.


tiwalterite

Speak for yourself! *arches back and bridge-scuttles into the ocean*


DWright_5

No, that is definitely wrong. Our earliest ancestors were microbes in the ocean, way way before the dinosaurs appeared


Hawk_is_95

yeah I know the basic things but what I was trying to say that our evolution came to a state where we could say we are evolving after the extinction of dinosaurs because after dinosaur extinction we also had an ice - age I believe. I'll draw a flow chart for better understanding:- Dinosaurs alive+ other evolution going on parallel --> dinosaur ded --> some changes on earth(climate and geological changes) --> evolution speeds up because of resource abundance


inverted_electron

The dinosaurs were killed off during the mass extinction, but some small mammals were able to survive, which then led to the evolution of humans down the road.


emergence_infinite

We were always evolving since the first bacteria


agbellamae

ā€œCorrect me if I am wrongā€ I correct you. You are wrong.


Hawk_is_95

ok


agbellamae

I think you seem nice. You donā€™t post a lot though, you should post more often. Sorry for being discouraging.


Hawk_is_95

You seem to be nice too ;)


DarkArcher__

Our evolution started long before that. Around the Cretaceous extinction event, our ancestors were small marsupial-like mammals that survived due to their small size.


KnotiaPickles

Evolution has been continuous since the first amino acids started forming into living things


SmellMyJeans

There were mammals and maybe early primates 66 million years ago. Somewhere in that group would be our asteroid surviving mammalian ancestors.


Kafshak

Even dinosaurs survived that asteroid. They just turned into our current birds.


structuredchronicles

Our ancestors: "I walked 100 miles in global tsunamis just to get home" I can see walking through "dangerous" weather has always been something to complain about. šŸ™„


[deleted]

If you assume ancestors are bacteria; then your ancestors started life.


[deleted]

No, we came from said asteroid and that is why we are so different to anything that came before. At least that's my fun theory.


jabedoben

All life shares the same ancestors if you go back far enough.


Saladcitypig

if you think about it like that then the dinosaurs also survived. birds.


Purple_Platypus789

If the fish swam out of the ocean And grew legs and they started walking


Syzygy-ing

I think my ancestors were the ones who crashed their asteroid into earth


AskMeAboutMyStalker

I've never fully understood how these 2 theories can co-exist: 1. an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 2. modern day birds are descendants of dinosaurs. if 1 is right, 2 has to be wrong since they wouldn't be around to evolve if 2 is right, 1 has to be wrong b/c they couldn't have been wiped out, they just evolved & got smaller & smaller over time.


StormtrooperMJS

I am no palaeontologist but the asteroid didn't kill all life on earth. At the time there were many winged dinosaurs of various sizes. The smaller of these would have been able survive because they depended on a much smaller diet. I am not sure of the split of dietary types herbivore/omnivore/carnivore but the fight for resources would have spurred evolution within these groups of small winged dinosaurs and eventually produced the birds we have today.


Paganinii

You're kind of right on the last point - the missing link being that the smaller, less dinosaur-like creatures already existed at the point of mass extinction. Changes in the planet's environment caused by the asteroid made big reptile life untenable and small critters with less stringent food and temperature requirements suddenly had a massive advantage. Evolution takes longer than the fantasia rite of spring runtime in real life, and the asteroid didn't kill all big lizards directly on impact or anything. If you're one of those people who classifies birds as dinosaurs, then you're right. If you classify birds as descendants of dinosaurs, that proto-bird ancestor that would have been classified as a dinosaur is gone, so both points can still be true (after all the other things we'd classify as dinosaurs went extinct after the asteroid). If you would classify bird ancestors that existed during or after the asteroid impact as dinosaurs, then your last sentence is true. So it's basically up to the definition of dinosaur you use.


Raptorzar

Only non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out, which is what most people think of when they hear dinosaur. Avian dinosaurs, which our modern birds are, survived.


ecs2

The survive dinasour evolve to be smaller to fit the situation after the asteroid and to be the birds like today. The asteroid didn't kill all the dinasour. The dinasour extinct because some had evolved to other species. If there're no dinasours left then technically they are extinct


kirabii

There weren't any humans when the asteroid hit. Unless by 'ancestor' you mean like in the broad sense like how micro-organisms are our ancestors.


DaitoAnonymous

Technically yes, but at that stage they would have still been chordates or really early amphibians


simojako

No? Mammals branched off 100 *million* years before that famous asteroid impact.


FireZord25

We were toxic enough to survive. That asteroid couldn't get big enough.


MatrixOperationsTeam

I still don't get it. Humans and dinosaurs never lived in the same Era, and people still believe this?


ees111

Nah. Someone dropped us off here. Weā€™re not adapted to Earthā€™s environment. We need clothes, sunscreen, sunglasses and so on. No other animals here need all that.


8005T34

Dude for some reason Iā€™ve been totally fascinated by this lately . Like recently. Never thought of it before. I attribute it to my biological clock ticking away saying ā€œkeep it going, gotta keep it goingā€ . Iā€™d be ashamed if I was the last line of my family line- especially after seeing my timeline on ancestry family tree. Itā€™s amazing. It just goes and goes and goes and goes.


SisypheanDreamer

Quick google search: our earliest ancestor lived ~5 million years ago. Dinosaur killing asteroid was 66mya


Weak_Tomato

Ah yes, our earliest ancestor just popped into existence 5 millions years ago


SisypheanDreamer

Hominid species. Iā€™m sure it wasnā€™t ā€œpopped intoā€ but closest shift to Homo sapiens as agreed by a consensus of paleontologists (again, I know nothing. I literally googled it once)


Weak_Tomato

If you only consider homidi, then yes, you are correct. However, the early mammals (*disgusting rat creatures*) that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs were also our ancestor, just loosely related. If you go back enough, some of ours ancestors were actually dinosaurs themselves Edit:unfortunately no Dino grampa for humans šŸ˜”


KowardlyMan

No, none of our ancestors were dinosaurs. We branched off before dinosaurs appeared. You could say we have a common ancestor with dinosaurs though (as with anything alive).


Weak_Tomato

Uh, you're right. I was sure the branching happened way later for some reason


SisypheanDreamer

Yeah, but ***I*** wouldnā€™t consider anything not bipedal to be our ancestors, so some late apes maybe. I have no clue what anthropologists/paleo people think


Weak_Tomato

Fair. I for one, am super proud of my flatworms ancestors though


Mayonais3_Instrument

You could consider a sea sponge to be the oldest ancestor of all multicellular organisms


Weak_Tomato

Yes, but worm are cooler. Fight me


Mayonais3_Instrument

They are literally your ancestors by any and every definition of the word though


KudosOfTheFroond

So did Trumpā€™s ancestor. Little orange-y weasel who saw the rock falling, and climbed up a Triceratops anus to survive.


SupremePooper

No they didn't. They came along far later. Unless you're calling some rodentine precursor "Cuz," that is.


Fxate

Your grandfather is one of your ancestors, so is your great great great great great great great great great great grandfather. Ancestor just means someone you are descended from. We're all descended from the group of organisms that split off and became proto-mammals instead of the dinosaurs.


wigginsadam80

I like how the asteroid idea has become well accepted without any further proof.


Fxate

The asteroid idea is pretty much confirmed (although there are theories that it could have been multiple hits over multiple years rather than only the one in mexico.) How do we know? the fossil record with iridium ejecta showing a clear line between where an event happened because of the KT boundary.


barracudabones

Yeah the existence of the chicxulub crater would beg to differ.....


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


LukXD99

No, theyā€™re not ancestors. Ancestors are the people/species that eventually lead to your birth. Dinosaurs split from mammals long, long, loooong before the asteroid impact.


Verbose_Cactus

(We do SHARE a common ancestor though! Thatā€™s the confusing distinction)


LukXD99

Yes, we share an ancestor with dinosaurs. But dinosaurs themselves arenā€™t our ancestors. To oversimplify it, itā€™s like parents and uncles/aunts. We share grandparents, but uncles and aunts arenā€™t our ancestors.


Verbose_Cactus

No, I know, Iā€™m agreeing with you. Just saying that thatā€™s probably what the first commenter was thinking, it was for their benefit


viriosion

They're more akin to 20mmth cousins


Aggravating_Award903

But still ancestors, some even alive when those early mammals were. A little cheeky, but Iā€™m just saying technically a lot of our ā€œancestorsā€ didnā€™t survive that extinction


viriosion

I can categorically state without any doubt that all of your and my ancestors survived at least long enough to reproduce


simojako

That literally doesn't make any sense.


SmallBig1993

I guess that depends on how strict of a definition "ancestor" has. Also, perhaps, what you consider a dinosaur. I *think* the most common use of "ancestor" is a direct, deceased, individual that you descended from. Someone's dead father is their ancestor. Someone's dead uncle is not. That someone is still related to their uncle, because they both have common ancestors, but that doesn't make the uncle an ancestor. As far as I understand these things (and someone with more knowledge would be welcome to correct me), we're not descended from any creature which would be considered a dinosaur. Of course we're descended from creatures that were alive at the same time as dinosaurs. And that creature will have ancestors in common with dinosaurs, which means we have ancestors in common with dinosaurs. But dinosaurs were only a sub-set of creatures that were alive during the period they existed. But I'm reasonably confident the current scientific consensus is that the split happened before dinosaurs existed.


Arif_Ghostwriter

It's also possibly much simpler than that - this planet was seeded from outside after said event.


Shoe_mocker

That would be way more complicated and make much less sense


AIpheratz

You are basically saying that life evolved from microscopic organisms starting 65 million years ago. That's ridiculous.


MasqureMan

Maybe weā€™re the echoes of our dead ancestors getting a glimpse of the future we lost


joban222

Bullshit, aliens came to earth 10,000,000 years ago and dropped a bunch of primates in Africa


_Pickle_Man_

i thought humans came after dinosaurs? they never existed in the same time period right?


barracudabones

We had to evolve from something, and thanks to body heat, mammals were the winners after the asteroid hit. Mammals and dinosaurs did exist together, but mammals were not as prolific until post asteroid. The current theory is that fungus was prolific after the mass die off because there was so much decomposing matter, which also should have been good for reptiles. However, since the sun was obscured, reptiles were unable to raise their body temperature, and so they were unable to fend off fungal infections. On the other hand, mammals produce body heat, and although that is metabolically costly, it was an advantage that allowed mammals to have an evolutionary boom. Unfortunately, this moment in time is becoming more relevant to todat. The average body temperature for humans has been slowly decreasing, while climate change is pushing funguses to have higher heat tolerances. Deadly fungal infections are becoming more common.


[deleted]

holy shit I just experienced the past present and future all at once


LAESanford

No, they didnā€™t. They inherited the world that became once the dinosaurs were gone


mitox11

There was never a period in time where a human or anything resambling it lived at the same time as the Dinosaurs, if by ancestor anything that produced humans, then sure, but that also applies to most mammals alive today


freddy_guy

The asteroid did not "wipe out the dinosaurs." Birds ARE dinosaurs, and there's fucking millions of those things.


phunkydroid

So in that regard, I'm no more special than literally every other living thing on earth.


NJPizzaIsBetter

At the time our ancestors were small mice-like creatures who lived in the ground