Remove ads

Dinosaurs existed in Central and South America

Muhkat Lomorki

Muhkat Lomorki

Draconic Sorcerer
Basically, the premise of this is that somehow, dinosaurs were still living in Central and South America during the times of the Aztecs.

How would this affect world history, and would Europeans have still taken over? Also, what type of weapons would be developed in those parts of the world and how would people and dinosaurs interact?
 
They go extinct when humanity shows up. You know, because that's what humans do. Except for maybe the smaller ones. Pack dinos sounds nice.
 
Europeans still win. Smallpox would still ravage them. About the only way the Aztecs could "win" would be if because of the dinos, there was an Americapox that ravaged the Old World too. Such diseases often come from domestication, where a virus jumps from something else to us. See CGPGrey below.

As for the larger ones, yeah, humans are going to hunt those to extinction pretty quickly, unless they happen to be smart and friendly enough for taming, but keeping one as a pet would be super expensive.

Part 1


Part 2
 
They might be able to tame some of the pack animals, maybe some variant of Raptor. Going off a variant of the anthropic principle, the dinos would have to be able to get along with humans in some way. This implies that they should be either species that are tamable, can be hunted sustainably, or don't compete and don't get hunted by humans.

So the big questions is would dino riding allow the native Americans to pulls themselves out of the Neolithic era?
 


Sentient dinosaurs will push back the invaders of course.

Doomsough said:
They might be able to tame some of the pack animals, maybe some variant of Raptor. Going off a variant of the anthropic principle, the dinos would have to be able to get along with humans in some way. This implies that they should be either species that are tamable, can be hunted sustainably, or don't compete and don't get hunted by humans.

So the big questions is would dino riding allow the native Americans to pulls themselves out of the Neolithic era?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Americas where firmly in the Chalcolithic period with hints of moving into the bronze age. One has to remember that stone and bone was still the primary tool for many people well into the bronze ages of the world.
 
Last edited:
Would the climate of modern south America suit dinosaurs ? Dinosaurs lived in an era when world was a lot warmer. And they may had been cold blooded. While not as cold as north America lot of south America still goes to near or below freezing due to being high altitude. Dinosaurs may only be able to survive comfortably near gulf of Mexico and northern Brazil.

The other issue is oxygen. Part of reason for gigantism in that period was the significantly higher oxygen content in air. Dinosaurs may be gasping for breath in todays atmosphere. And thats at sea level, now imagine them at high altitudes of places like Peru where even fit athelets run short of breath.
 
galahad said:
Would the climate of modern south America suit dinosaurs ? Dinosaurs lived in an era when world was a lot warmer. And they may had been cold blooded. While not as cold as north America lot of south America still goes to near or below freezing due to being high altitude. Dinosaurs may only be able to survive comfortably near gulf of Mexico and northern Brazil.

The other issue is oxygen. Part of reason for gigantism in that period was the significantly higher oxygen content in air. Dinosaurs may be gasping for breath in todays atmosphere. And thats at sea level, now imagine them at high altitudes of places like Peru where even fit athelets run short of breath.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's why they would be living in the parts of America which aren't mountainous or too cold.
 
galahad said:
Would the climate of modern south America suit dinosaurs ? Dinosaurs lived in an era when world was a lot warmer. And they may had been cold blooded. While not as cold as north America lot of south America still goes to near or below freezing due to being high altitude. Dinosaurs may only be able to survive comfortably near gulf of Mexico and northern Brazil.

The other issue is oxygen. Part of reason for gigantism in that period was the significantly higher oxygen content in air. Dinosaurs may be gasping for breath in todays atmosphere. And thats at sea level, now imagine them at high altitudes of places like Peru where even fit athelets run short of breath.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


During certain times during the age of dinosaurs oxygen levels where lower then they are today. That makes sense as dinosaurs have highly complex systems of air sacs to maximize oxygen intake. Also dinosaurs lived all the way down to the south pole so they could have handled cold of the vast majority of the modern world. I mean we have dinosaurs as the largest animal that stays year round on Antarctica after all. As for cold blooded some of the dinosaurs might have been gigantotherms with stable body temperatures while many others would have been full endotherms.
 
Tasrill said:
During certain times during the age of dinosaurs oxygen levels where lower then they are today. That makes sense as dinosaurs have highly complex systems of air sacs to maximize oxygen intake. Also dinosaurs lived all the way down to the south pole so they could have handled cold of the vast majority of the modern world. I mean we have dinosaurs as the largest animal that stays year round on Antarctica after all. As for cold blooded some of the dinosaurs might have been gigantotherms with stable body temperatures while many others would have been full endotherms.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In that case, I guess some will be living on the more higher altitude areas.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top