What would the world be like if dinosaurs still existed?

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The "assumption" that dinosaurs MIGHT have evolved into inteligent humanoids is not an assumption at all. Your assertion that its based on a 'mistaken idea about evolution" is based upon your own lack of understanding of paleontology, and on your simplistic outdated ideas about dinosaurs being analogous to modern day reptiles.

And even the term 'reptile' is a makeshift term for lumping unrelated vertabrates together.

Modern day lizards are closer kin to modern day birds than thay are to modern turtles. But turtles and lizards are lumped together under the rubric of 'reptile' that excludes birds.


To make a long complicated story short: The land was dominated by large animals known as "therapsids" (aka 'mammal-like reptiles') that were probably intermediate between warmblooded and coldblooded. And not quite like any modern repitle, or modern mammal, metabolically.

After fifty million years of rule they were overthrown by the rising dinosaurs ( who evolved from a totally different bunch of 'reptiles'), and almost driven to extinction. The therapsids that survived were the ones who crossed the line into becoming fully warmblooded mammals (and they did that in order to survive as minaturized nocternal creatures who needed insulation for their small bodies-hense fur). From this point (200 million years ago) on the dinosaurs rule, and the mammals survive-but remain small nocternal bug hunters like shrews for the nex 140 million years).

Then the dinosaurs themselves experimented with semi-warmbloodedness (much as the therapsids had done previously). And were also not really analogous to modern lizards. Then around 150 million years ago one lineage of dinos evolved feathers for insulation and also became fully endothermic. Some of this latter group also happened to stumble upon flight.

Then the asteroid hit at 63 millions years ago and wiped the big dinos out. But the small flying ones still thrive to this day.

Had the dinos somehow dodged the bullet all of the large animal niches would still be occupied by dinosaurs today. And mammals would be checkmated, and would still all only exist as shrews and hedghogs.

But some dinos were already upright and bipedal. So its easy to imagine a feathered warmblooded bipedal dinosaur evolving into a kind of intelligent groundbound man-sized birdlike creature- but a bird with forearms - perhaps with forearms that eventually evolve opposable thumbs.

Had the dinos somehow dodged the bullet all of the large animal niches would still be occupied by dinosaurs today. And mammals would be checkmated, and would still all only exist as shrews and hedghogs.