Prehistory WI: No flowering plants.

What happens if for some reason flowering plants don't evolve?

Obviously humans and associated critters never evolve, but what would happen to the dinosaurs if there are no angiosperms? What would a dinosaurian ecosystem absent hadrosaurians and ceratopsians result in?
 

Keenir

Banned
What happens if for some reason flowering plants don't evolve?

Obviously humans and associated critters never evolve, but what would happen to the dinosaurs if there are no angiosperms? What would a dinosaurian ecosystem absent hadrosaurians and ceratopsians result in?

we may or may not see therizinosaurs (what did they munch upon?)...and hte titanosaurs may initiate a second (third?) sauropod radiation.

we'll probably still have birds of all sorts, though they may be even more aquatic and lake-living than they were in OTL.
 
we may or may not see therizinosaurs (what did they munch upon?)...and hte titanosaurs may initiate a second (third?) sauropod radiation.

That's a good point. The 'dinofauna' was almost completely reshaped in the second half of the Creataceous and a lot of it could be related to the change in flora that happened at the time. So who knows. Maybe no Ceratopsians, possibly no Hadrosaurs either though there might be Iguanodontid equivalents to both of them.

And who knows if Tyrannosaurids didn't turn giant because those critters turned giant first.

Two things that are a given to never evolve, BTW, are social hymenopterans (termites would still be there, though) and primates (since basically everything that takes us apart of insectivores are adaptations to eat fruit).
 
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