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Well don't forget that Earth had it's reset button smashed 66 million years ago. Let's say another world started out at the same as we did but never encountere
by shepardrtc 2y ago
Well don't forget that Earth had it's reset button smashed 66 million years ago. Let's say another world started out at the same as we did but never encountered such a cataclysm. Even if they took an additional 65 million years to develop, they'd still be a million years older than us.
- quotemstr 2y agoThe KT boundary is hardly a "reset button smashed". Yes, it was a mass extinction event, but these things happen. The products of billions of years of evolution survived, even if megafauna had a setback. Evolution spent billions of years figuring out basic things like the genetic code, sexual reproduction, and mitochondria. All these technologies survived the KT boundary. Complex multicellular life emerged only about 560 million years ago (after single-celled life had been around for billions of years). The implication is that the early innovations in life (ribosomes, etc.) were "harder" than later ones involving eyes, brains, and so on. A "reset button" would be more like the impact that created the moon: ramming a Mars-sized body into Earth turns Earth into a magma ocean. Nothing survives that. By comparison, the KT boundary asteroid is small potatoes.