The upcoming CGI-animated Disney/Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur, which will be released in theaters on Nov. 25, proposes a world where dinos weren't wiped off of the face of the Earth after the asteroid Chicxulub crashed into the Yucatán Peninsula around 66 million years ago — meaning that both humans and gigantic reptilian-like creatures coexist in one cartoon alternate universe.
Minus the suspension of disbelief regarding the erasure of the Chicxulub asteroid (and talking dinosaurs in general), would the world of The Good Dinosaur resemble anything close to reality if dinosaurs had not become extinct? According to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the answer is no.
In a video clip posted on YouTube, deGrasse Tyson explains that a world in which dinosaurs and humans inhabited side-by-side would derail our evolution considerably, all thanks to size. Because dinos were much larger creatures than either our humanoid ancestors or Homo sapiens as we now know them, they would assume the top of the food chain, casting us into the lower echelons of the carnivorous ecosystem. Subsequently, we'd remain in a smaller, basic evolutionary state to better avoid our trampling, scaly superiors.
"In the animal kingdom, one of the keys to survival is to outwit your enemy," says deGrasse Tyson in the video. "Our mammal ancestors were running under slip, avoiding becoming hors d'ouerves [for] T. Rex ... they probably would have stayed just that way."
Check out Neil deGrasse Tyson debunk the science used in The Good Dinosaur in the video below.
Via: Outer Places
