In Dixon's book "After Man: A Zoology of the Future" Dixon discusses important evolutionary concepts
including natural selection, the development of many species from a single group and convergent
evolution of species in similar niches. He includes a history of the Earth to the present and then jumps
to a time 50 billion years into the future. Dixon describes the process of plate tectonics to show how
the continents will be arranged in the future. He envisions that Man's impact upon his environment will
cause major extinction, resulting in the human species dying off, which he implies may already in
progress. Further along in the book Dixon gives examples of species survival by showing how more
adaptive animals and birds moved in to fill the environmental niches left after man's devastation.
On page 39 of After Man Dixon introduces you to the "Rabbucks" (upper left shows only one example) an antelope like animal evolved from rabbits that took the place of the ungulates (hoofed mammals, both wild and domestic) that became extinct because of their dependence on Man for survival.
Page 40 gives you a glimpse of one of the new predators, in this case a descendant of the rodent, that's about the size of the cat. (right)
Click here to see more examples of the "Predator" Rat
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