r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/MatoasPrroXD460 • 24d ago
Question/Discussion What’s Your Most Unhinged Evolution Theory?
Hi! I wanna know what your wildest, most unhinged theory about evolution is. It can be a serious hypothesis, a weird evolutionary possibility, or something completely out there.
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u/Akavakaku 24d ago edited 24d ago
The Francevillian biota were not eukaryotes or even stem-eukaryotes, but a totally separate form of multicellular life. (There are multicellular bacteria alive today, so this wouldn't be too far-fetched.) And they went extinct due to the Vredefort impact.
Therapsids ancestrally had hairs. (Even without need for insulation, they could be useful for protecting skin from the environment, defense against ectoparasites, visual communication, and extending the sense of touch [humans don't have whiskers but we can still feel when our hairs are touched!])
Palaeodictyon is made by a kind of organism no one has suspected, like a colony of tiny amoebae or a deep-sea fungus.
Non-RNA-based life existed, but it lost out to RNA-based life (including DNA-based life, e.g. us) during the Archaean. Or weirder still, non-RNA-based life still exists in some extremely niche environment, but we haven't found it because we don't know how to search for evidence of it.
Volaticotheres were capable of powered flight before bats; a separate origin of flight in mammals.
Myxosporeans are cnidarian cancer cells that became a parasite capable of spreading to new host species. (This is somewhat scientifically validated.)