When the environment changes sufficiently to wipe out whole branches of the evolutionary tree, I'd still expect those branches still alive to evolve in incremental fashion. Even if most lineages were wiped out, leaving only extremophiles, then those would still be building upon their own evolutionary history.

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heavyset_go 3 days ago | parent [-]

I assume we will have sterilizing temperatures and pressures on Earth if all of the water ends up in the atmosphere, and heat releases even more greenhouse gases + subterranean water, leading to a runaway situation like Venus or worse.

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HarHarVeryFunny 3 days ago | parent [-]

Maybe eventually, but I'm not sure of the relevance to the discussion, which is about the incremental nature of evolution.

	▲	heavyset_go 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Point is the Earth might reach a state that even incremental evolution can't overcome, my response is to your question about what life might look like if we sped up by billions of years. It might not look like anything.