The First Dragons of the Cenozoic: Ornithischia's Survivors

Greg Wilson's talk on mammal survival post K-Pg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrDAvn0sfjg Paper describing Jakapil where it's advanced masticatory system is discussed www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9372066/ Paper on the impact of the K-Pg in higher latitudes www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleont… source of post-forest fire forest regrowth used as a stand in for post-impact Antarctic forest www.nps.gov/articles/000/wildfires-kill-unpreceden…

The fact that these little nerds will not be able to influence Eurasiafrica is a really funky way to keep the timeline close enough to still have humans in the setting. Kinda makes me salty that didn't quite happen with any dinosaur groups in real life, but I suppose marsupials are a satisfactory consolation prize!

"Cenozoic Dragons" gives me "Dragons: a Fantasy Made Real" vibes

The extinction of temnospondyls always hits me hard great video series

Keep up the good work. The fact that you link the scientific papers you reference in the video is reason enough for me to subscribe!

Also we also gonna see humans domesticated the surviving non avian dinosaurs as pets and livestock in this alternative timeline

This is really really a fun idea, I really appreciate your series - I love these spec evo, seed world, alien evolution type videos tracing a lineage through time and seeing millions of years of evolution - this one has just become the one I'm most excited to follow ^9^

This is a great little series! I love the focus on the day-to-day survival of the specific species, and what specific adaptations each one had that allowed them to survive. I'd actually been developing something similar, an alternate world where the K/Pg impact still happened, but was just slightly less severe, allowing a slightly higher diversity of taxa to survive. It's interesting how we both seem to have come to similar conclusions about the most likely survivors small generalist paravians and basal thyreophorans. I ended up saying that basal marginocephalians survived over small ornithopods, but I was also imagining multiple refuges around the world, while yours are concentrated in Antarctica, so I can see why you went the way you did. Another comment pointed out that your approach still allows most of the major modern mammal groups to arise in Afro-Eurasia, including potentially humans, which was something I hadn't even considered when working on mine. I had speculative dinosaurs and real-world mammals separated more by niche partitioning in different environments, but maybe yours is a better approach, having them enter Eurasia later via North America after they've already diversified. I might steal that idea actually (don't worry I don't plan to post it anywhere so no competition). >~<

I am very, VERY interested in this alternate Australia. in my own alternate history fic, I came up with an entire clade of "retrosaur" inspired reptiles for faux Australian dinos, that were used by iron age Australian aboriginal kingdoms, using retrosaur labor and domesticated native Australian crops to develop agricultural societies prior to discovery by any Europeans.

Just found your channel and i already love your content

happy to see you still making content

I woke up today to find this, got to say this is a very interesting project! can't wait to see more of it!

I just discovered this an am absolutely adoring it! My really small nitpick though is that specific epithets should be lowercase (and the whole binominal name should probably be either bold, italicized or underlined, though this can definitely be flexible with artistic license, and I'm unsure if they already are with the chosen font)

Really excited to see where this series is headed! I personally think artwork looks great btw

As the Antarctic climate becomes much less survivable and the other two separate moving northwards. I can absolutely see where both could have divergent and uniquely interesting stories. The South American species have more mammalian competition, particularly as they connect to North America and are exposed to the influx of Eurasian related mammals of nth America. So the evolution of Saurians there will be very interesting. But at the same time those in Australia will get all the way to the last 100 thousand years to evolve with no influx of non dinosaur rivals, getting to dominate a world of small marsupials and monotremes, in ecoSystems largely of the same plants that existed before the meteorite. Making Australia’s ecosystems truly allow for an intriguing, isolated, but large world that’s substantially more alien than this stories Americas. I assume a number of the ancient species we did see grow into megafauna will still do so even in this Australia, so I could even be possible that no humans succeed in colonising Australia until after the Stone Age, the same is cannot say for North America if not the entire new world.

Wow, this is amazing, and kind of surreal. I'm halfway through writing a lost world genre sci fi book that derives its Cenozoic survivors from this exact same premise and logic - even some of the surviving lineages match up. I'm really impressed with how much thought and effort you've put into creating a plausible scenario, given the events that actually took place, rather than something more whimsical, like "What if the K-Pg didn't happen at all?". Given how similar the premise is, I'd love to share what I'm working on with you & compare notes, if you're interested (my email's in my profile's About section). Sorry for writing this in a comment, but I couldn't find a way to message you directly. Looking forward to more videos about your project!

This project is making me wonder what would happen when close to modern day. Because I'm pretty sure the Non-avian dinosaurs will be only live in southern parts of the world and later Nouth America so only people for long time would be the Native Americans and Aboriginals live with these mighty animals that definitely going to change history big time. Also, I really don't think there going be hunting to extinction for many reasons but main one they can have lot of kids.

Asking this mostly out of my own curiosity if thou doesn't mind. Given humans are implied that they exist within this timeline still. How far altered is the later parts of the Cenozoic? Is the the "modern day" then more so normal ish [if not entirely as it is now. Just a weirder past] or is there a mix of familiar and unfamiliar things. That might fall under spoilers though idk but would be understandable. And lad don't be to worried about your art presentation. Tis pretty good and honestly you give out the info effectively. People using there imagination with good context to the world itself is half the sauce. Basically keep up the good work this shit is fire!

This has been an excellent spec evo series so far. I really like. Though part of me wishes that you didn't limit the butterfly effect to keep humans around, as I think it would be interesting to see the non-avian dinosaurs, after the GABI, also expand further out of North America into Eurasia and Africa (maybe an idea for a future series?). Even so, this series should prove very interesting to watch. Can't wait for more! P.S. I really hope you don't have South America experience a localized mass extinction prior to the GABI like in the OTL (as well as countless other spec evo projects). Seriously, I've never seen a spec evo project involving South America explore what could have been if SA fauna just prior to the GABI hadn't gone through that mass extinction, so it would be nice to see that happen here.

This is another great video. I did not expect a a thyreophoran to be among the survivors, for the obvious reasons. But I am pretty happy all around. I was planning on asking you about surviving Nyctosaurids, but I see you want to keep the butterfly effect limited, so I guess why you chose not to use them.