re: If not for primates, what creature would have dominated the planet?

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Cephalopods have been around a lot longer than primates or I'm pretty sure even mammals. They had their chance. If they were going to take it then it would have happened already.

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Cephalopods dominated the Mesozoic about 180 million frickin' years. If that was not long enough....
But for the popular appeal of dinosaurs, the Mesozoic wouldn't be the Age of Reptiles, but the age of Cephalopods.
There are spectacular fossil beds in Europe that are Ceph skeletons, not to mention the Belemnites beds in the Black Forest in Germany. In North America our rocks of the same age are often terrestrial in origin so we don't see them (and do get dinosaur etc. remains.)

The creature that would have dominated the planet would be an omnivore so that branches of the family tree could utilize either plant material or animals or even carrion. Sort of sounds like birds (have you seen what chickens eat?....and they do move in 'packs', some of them do, and they can escape other predators, and they do learn (Turtle dropped on the head of Aeschylus, not to kill him but to break the shell. Or so the story goes.)

I WNHI