Anna Li, 7th Period A World Without Humans The Next Step in Evolution In the 21st century, the

world without humans would be very hard to imagine. Its one thing to just rewind time and go back to when people had not evolved yet (after all, if the entire geological history of earth was condensed into a calendar, humans have only been around on the last second of midnight). Right now, were in the Quaternary Period, the Age of Man. Go back a few more million years and you get to the Tertiary Period. To understand the future, we must first understand the past, and so Ill give a quick summary of whats going on in the Tertiary Period. The Tertiary Period earned the nickname Age of Mammals because it was the time when mammals were taking over the land and replacing the reptiles. The dominant predators were the saber-toothed tiger and mastodon (not really a predator, but still a dominant animal). Like the fall of great empires in the age of man, usually a dominant species (like the dinosaurs) dies out or falls when another, more powerful species takes over (like the mammals). However, in this case, the humans would simply disappear off the face of the earthcurrently, there is no species even close to dominating people (except maybe the man-eating lions in Africa), so the one species falls when another dominates theory likely wouldnt work. What I do know is this: Immediately after the downfall of mankind (perhaps a few weeks) our pets would die, and dog and cat species would quickly become extinct without human aid. Im guessing that there would be

Anna Li, 7th Period a mini rewind of time as our buildings collapse and decay, and global warming slowly cools down. The dominant predators of the earth would depend on the region, and each animals strengths and weaknesses; polar bears would dominate the arctic, as lions and tigers would dominate the safari. Everything would have to stabilize before any real developments can be made. Going back to our geologic time scale, if you did Fossils in Science Olympiad like me you would know that there have been several periods in which a specific class reins the land; first it was fish, then it was amphibians, then it was reptiles, and now it is mammals. Following the trend, Id say birds havent had a good turn yet, so I predict that the next dominant creature would be the class Aves, birds. Long story short, birds will rule the world if humans disappear. Of all creatures, they have been least affected by Global Warming and are still developing strongly as a species. In addition, they havent been top dog of the world yet, so its about time that they have a turn. Its been a few million years, why not switch it up?