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Nicholas R. Longrich, Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath

What if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct? Why our world might look very different

Ajnabia odysseus lived 66 million years ago, making it one of the last dinosaurs on Earth Raul Martin

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. The skies darkened and plants stopped photosynthesising. The plants died, then the animals that fed on them. The food chain collapsed. Over 90% of all species vanished. When the dust settled, all dinosaurs except a handful of birds had gone extinct.

But this catastrophic event made human evolution possible. The surviving mammals flourished, including little proto-primates that would evolve into us.

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