To be fair, our evolutionary roots were pretty poor teachers.
Nature is teeming with animals that will move from place to place, leaving litter and feces everywhere for some other life-form to clean it up. It just so happens that when this practice becomes unsustainable (e.g. due to shrinking habitats, competition, lack of resources or overpopulation), these populations die out or migrate elsewhere.
Depends on the scale. The ecosystems of today are much more complex than the age of the dinosaurs, so it is growing in complexity in deep time and not just a 1:1 replacement.
To be fair, our evolutionary roots were pretty poor teachers. Nature is teeming with animals that will move from place to place, leaving litter and feces everywhere for some other life-form to clean it up. It just so happens that when this practice becomes unsustainable (e.g. due to shrinking habitats, competition, lack of resources or overpopulation), these populations die out or migrate elsewhere.
Depends on the scale. The ecosystems of today are much more complex than the age of the dinosaurs, so it is growing in complexity in deep time and not just a 1:1 replacement.