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Q&A

Which modern organisms would survive a new K-Pg level impact?

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EDIT: As many have pointed out, the whole Lunar Collision aspect I originally envisioned is probably more extreme than I predicted. I don't know where to start as far as the math goes, although my gut instinct says that a series of smaller collisions could make it work, but I could take or leave the Moon getting enough mass to be habitable. That's just a thought I had mostly for spectacle. The important part is that in modern times, a K-Pg level impact or series of impacts occurs, so what organisms are likely to survive that?

Original Main Body:

An origin I'm considering for the Science Fantasy world I'm building is that in the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D., a foreign celestial body or cluster of asteroids/comets joins Earth's orbit, then collides and merges into the Moon, adding enough mass to it that it eventually gets oceans and an atmosphere, and spreading debris around that peppers the Earth with meteorites for the eons to follow. The first wave of meteor crashes causes a mass extinction event comparable to the K-Pg impact.

So here's my question: What notable modern organisms will have died out or diversified after a new K-Pg type event, which also includes the moon's mass drastically increasing?

I of course searched for more generally related threads before asking. I'm not talking about:

Would animals really mutate in the post-apocalypse? This thread is just talking about radiation-induced mutation.

What is the next dominant species? This is asking what non-primates might become like humans, not quite what I'm looking for.

What aquatic creatures would survive a large-end mass extinction? This is too specific to the ocean, and also assumes that no life larger than an insect survives the impact. My apocalypse isn't quite that extreme.

In my scenario, humans just barely survive, evolving into at least 8 species and reverting from modern/futuristic to stone-age tech until about 10,000 years before the actual story begins, and they make some pretty drastic adaptations to make it through, even with their intelligence. So with that as a benchmark, what other life forms will make it, and which ones won't?

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/154643. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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