"But what if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteorite created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continue to thrive, and evolved into intelligent, vicious, aggressive beings? Just like us!"
— Narrator, Super Mario Bros. (1993)
The K-Pg extinction is one of the most important events in Earth's history; millions died and countless species went extinct because of a single meteor strike (or something else entirely), so naturally, many writers have asked the same question:
What if the dinosaurs had lived?
As we all know, dinosaurs are pretty cool, but they've been gone for 66 million years, so.... how do we cram them into non-Period Pieces? It's simple, just create an Alternate History where they're still around!
This trope is distinct from the Lost World genre, where a small enclave of prehistoric animals is isolated from the "modern world". In this trope, the entire timeline is changed so that dinosaurs — or whatever other prehistoric animals the writer is focusing on — have survived to the present. Despite the fact that, logically, humans would not have evolved in a world where dinosaurs did not become extinct, they will often be shown to exist anyway because Most Writers Are Human. In many cases, the dinosaurs will be shown as little different from their prehistoric ancestors, even though dinosaurs changed a lot over the 186 million years before their extinction and thus it would be truly bizarre for them to not change any further over the next 66 million. Other times, however, the writers will engage in Speculative Biology, creating new fictional species descended from real ones.
Compare and contrast Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs, which is about how they died rather than if they'd lived.
And yes, we know that birds are technically dinos, but this is about the non-avian dinosaurs (and contemporary creatures) surviving to the modern day.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In the setting backstory of Dinosaur Sanctuary, a surviving population of non-avian dinosaurs was discovered on a remote island and put into a special breeding programme by humanity, allowing them to become numerous enough to be exported to zoos and animal parks worldwide.
- In Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs, unknown to humanity, dinosaurs still live in an underground civilization and have evolved into a human-like state. At the end of the movie it's revealed that this outcome was caused by Doraemon when he, in a last resort to save everybody and escape the destruction of the meteor, activates the Pop Basement gadget and evacuated all dinosaurs into it.
- Dragon Ball is set in a world where dinosaurs, as well as talking animals and aliens, co-exist with humans. At one point, Beerus mentions in an off-hand comment about how he offed the dinosaurs on Earth because they annoyed him, which contradicts the fact that they're frequently shown there. Given Beerus' extreme laziness, it's entirely in-character for him to have not been very thorough in wiping them out.
- In the world of My Girlfriend is a T-Rex, dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles survived extinction by developing human-like features.
Comic Strips
- In Dilbert, the titular character makes a calculation that dinosaurs did not all go extinct and the ones that survived went into hiding. Out come the dinosaurs Bob and Dawn, with the former claiming that the idea that the dinosaurs were wiped by a giant asteroid was highly exaggerated and that it was actually a slightly large meteor that fell on top of one dinosaur who survived (although he is implied to be an Unreliable Narrator).
Films — Animation
- In Dinosaur, many dinosaurs are shown to have survived the asteroid impact, and are trying to find the "Nesting Grounds", the only place on Earth to still remain habitable to dinosaurs.
- The Good Dinosaur is set in a world where non-avian dinosaurs (along with pterosaurs) never became extinct and Jurassic dinosaurs like Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus coexist with Cretaceous dinosaurs like Triceratops and Parasaurolophus and even prehistoric mammals like the giant bison Bison latifrons that existed in the ice ages.
Films — Live-Action
- Super Mario Bros. (1993): The title duo are sent to an alternate Earth's version of Manhattan, called "Dinohattan", where the dinosaurs never went extinct and evolved into humans. They save it from its evil mayor, Koopa.
Literature
- Anonymous Rex takes place in a world where dinosaurs didn't go (completely) extinct, but eventually evolved into humanoid forms and, in order to prevent mankind from finding out about them and kill them, developed secret societies and perfect disguise suits. The protagonist, private detective Vincent Rubio, is one of them — a Velociraptor, to be exact.
- The Astrosaurs series, similar to the Star Trek example, which said that dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures discovered space travel and left Earth before the meteor struck.
- Destroyermen: The alternate timeline to which the Squall transports the Walker, Mahan, and Amagi is theorized to be one where the dinosaurs never went extinct. The Grik are believed to be dinosaurkin that evolved to have humanlike intelligence, and large mammals share the islands of southeast Asia with theropod predators nicknamed "thunder lizards".
- The premise of the kids' book Dodos are Not Extinct; They're Just in Disguise is that none of the extinct species actually ever died out; they're just disguising themselves as other animals. This includes dinosaurs.
- Fortunately, the Milk: Played with. Dinosaurs did indeed vanish from the Earth, allowing mankind to evolve. However, it's not because they were wiped out by the K-T event. Instead, they built spaceships and went out exploring, and only returned in modern times to chase a group of planet-vandalizing green snot aliens.
- Keeper of the Lost Cities: Part of the Masquerade is that dinosaurs and other seemingly extinct animals never actually went extinct; instead, they are under the care of the elves, who keep their existence secret from humanity.
- The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution, by Dougal Dixon, is an examination of a world where dinosaurs have survived and evolved over 65 million years.
- Quintaglio Ascension: The setting of this place is at an Earth-like Moon where the inhabitants are dinosaurs, one of which is the Quintaglios, humanoid-like tyrannosaurs. It turns out that some dinosaurs were collected by an alien race and then transported to the Quintaglio moon where they can safely live out and evolve. The Quintaglios are said to have descended from Nanotyrannus, though this is heavily debatable as said genus is now said to be considered a juvenile specimen of Tyrannosaurus.
- Tales of Kaimere: The premise is that on the titular magic, swarms of single-celled organisms called magic have been transporting Earth animals for over hundreds of millions of years, non-avian Dinosaurs among them. The last Cretacous harvest was 68 million years ago in East Asia, bringing in dinosaurs such as Tarbosaurus, Titanosaurs, and Hadrosaurs that became the dominate animals in the main continents of Nikar and Arvel. A mass extinction 15 million years would lead to small generalists like Megaraptors, small armored Titanosaurs, and Thescelosaurus becoming dominate even against arriving mammals.
- The West of Eden trilogy by Harry Harrison is set in an alternate history where the dinosaurs did not become extinct, and anthropomorphic monitor lizards evolved into a sapient species that co-exist with humans.
- Running of the Bulls by Harry Turtledove. The "bulls" are ceratopsian dinosaurs. And the final twist is that the "human" characters are evolved dinosaurs as well.
- Turtledove also wrote three alternate history short stories where the Chicxulub impactor never hit Earth and raptors evolved an intelligent species.
Live-Action TV
- Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger: Dino Earth is a parallel reality where the dinosaurs survived, its inhabitants include Dino-people and talking Humongous Mecha shaped like dinosaurs called "Bakuryu".
- The main premise of Dinosapien is what would happen if some non-avian dinosaurs survived and became sapient.
- Nova: In one episode, the narrator asked us what if the meteor didn't kill the dinosaurs. One scene shows a group of people in raincoats holding umbrellas. One of them reveals to be a dinosaur underneath the umbrella, complete with a Jump Scare.
- Power Rangers Dino Charge: The extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an earlier defeat of Sledge where a bomb was snuck onto his ship, and the resulting explosion sent the asteroids he collected raining down all at once upon the Earth. After altering the past to defeat Sledge before the asteroid-triggering defeat, the Rangers return to the present day to find that their museum has become a dinosaur sanctuary since dinosaurs were never destroyed. Later crossover specials reveal that the Dino Charge reality is an Alternate Universe to the one most other Power Rangers seasons take place in, where dinosaurs are still extinct (and that the post-apocalyptic season Power Rangers RPM took place in yet a third universe).
- Two episodes of Sliders did this, with the characters visiting parallel universes where dinosaurs have survived. In one of them, they do also encounter humans, implying the lack of dinosaur extinction didn't prevent mammals to evolve (it's vaguely implied they were on different continents).
- In Star Trek: Voyager episode Distant Origin Voyager encounters a race called Voth, which have apparently evolved from dinosaurs that left Earth before the meteorite hit, and set up a new home in the Delta Quadrant.
Podcasts
- The Twilight Histories mini-episode "Beyond the Indus" takes place in a world where dinosaurs somehow survived in India, and were domesticated by the Indians as sources of food and beast of burden.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS Alternate Earths features the United States of Lizardia, where Troodon-descended Lizard Folk became the dominant lifeform. The similarity of their society to our human world is acknowledged as an extreme oddity. They are covered again, in a bit more detail, in GURPS Infinite Worlds, which also mentions a couple of worlds with more straightforward dinosaur survivals, serving as interesting if dangerous research and tourism destinations.
Video Games
- Fate/Grand Order: In the 7th Lostbelt, the dinosaurs survived the asteroid impact, leading to the world being ruled by dinosaur people. It's eventually revealed that the Chixulub Impact happened much earlier in this timeline (around 300 milion years ago), and that the alien bacteria it released empowered the dinosaurs to become the dominant race. In Proper Human History, the meteor arrives shortly after the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud, ORT collided with the planet and triggered the dinosaurs' extinction, resulting in man being chosen as the vessel of the alien bacteria.
- Paleo Pines' Steam page used to say that evolution took the path of "survival of the kindest" in this universe, so humans live alongside easily-tameable prehistoric creatures. Most of them are non-avian dinosaurs, but there are a few others such as Dimetrodon (a synapsid), Desmatosuchus, and Postosuchus (both crocodylomorphs).
- Invoked in Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds when the Grey Goo accidentally swallows a meteor that otherwise would have caused the dinosaurs to go extinct in the Mesozoic Era. This causes an alteration in the timeline, leading dinosaurs to suddenly appear in the present. As a bonus point, the scientists' lab cat changes to a dinosaurian species.
Webcomics
- One story arc in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja was dinosaurs attempting to return to Earth after being thrown in space by the meteor impact and growing intelligent after exposure to some cosmic radiation.
Web Original
- One of Alphynix's Spectember drawings is about Mirasaura
, a species of sapient ornithischians from a timeline where non-avian dinosaurs (and multituberculates) survive into the present day.
- The Web Original Speculative Biology project Dinosauroids by Simon Roy and C.M. Kosemen (the author of All Tomorrows) examines an alternate history where the meteor impact never happened. The project not only examines what possible niches the new species of dinosaurs would fill, but how their presence affects other species and their evolution, and even hypothesizes what form their technology, tools, and culture would take. He makes a particular point to avoid anthropomorphism in his work.
- There's a children's tale in this Spanish site, "Los Ultimos Dinosaurios", that's about a group of dinosaurs commanded by a terrible T. rex that were trapped in a cave for millions of years and survived somehow to our era. When they're out, the T. rex leader plans to Take Over the World but soon finds that after millions of years, they've shrunken to mascot-size. They're adopted by children in a local town close to the cave, and the dinosaurs accept being their mascots for good.
- The defunct The Speculative Dinosaur Project is a zoology and occasional paleontology guide to an alternate Earth where the meteor never hit, written as if by scientists studying it after discovery. Tyrannosaurus, Abelisaurus, Titanosaurus, Triceratops, and Parasaurolophus descendants include Smilotyrannus, Nigertherium, Mokelesaurus, Brachioceratops, and Tonitrobalus respectively. There is also plenty of weirder stuff like seagoing platypi, raptorial penguins, and carnivorous primates. This project could also be seen as a Spiritual Successor to the aforementioned The New Dinosaurs by Dougal Dixon.
Western Animation
- Back to the Future: In the episode Forward to the Past, Doc and his sons inadvertently cause this to happen when, during a trip to prehistoric times, they disintegrate the meteor that would have killed the dinosaurs. Returning to the future, they find themselves in an alternate 1991, where humans don't exist and dinosaurs have developed a human-like civilization. Before they can be erased from existence, the Browns return to the prehistoric era and Doc reintegrates the meteor, restoring the correct timeline.
- In two of the Alternate Universes Ford visits in Gravity Falls: Journal 3, the dinosaurs never went extinct. In one universe, they remained animalistic; in the other, they became sapient.
- In the world of OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, small dinosaurs and pterosaurs take the place of wild creatures like squirrels or pigeons. Gar's Bodega has a baby T. rex as a mascot, named Baby T; the Grand Finale shows him fully grown, but still gentle.
