When I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins University, one of my classmates, Phyllis Schneck (who went on to Georgia Tech for her Ph.D.) talked about interning for some company or institute, and using SimEarth. They were sponsored by some federal agency or other, and I just remember her saying "yeah, we had to take out the intelligent dinosaurs". That's when I realized that we still had a ways to go. (There's a Monolith in SimEarth that works just like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in that it uplifts Mammals, Dinosaurs, Avians, Reptiles, or Carniferns to sapience. If you are playing in a mode where you can accumulate enough "Omega", you can even uplift Cetaceans or Fish.)
--
Banazir