Ah yes! >>> When Plate Tectonics Strikes!! <<
One minute your continent is in the tropics. Suddenly you're at 70 degrees North and being flash-frozen with buttercups in your mouth.
Ah yes! >>> When Plate Tectonics Strikes!! <<
Silly time again for the evos. Point is that there are many environmental changes which are survivable- if creatures are adaptable. The ones mentioned by your friend balrog666 at post# 1072 are good examples:
Of course we have sunspot cycles, minor and major ice age cycles, meteor impacts, super-volcano eruptions, earthquakes, plate tectonics producing subduction and uplift, and, of course, weather pattern changes to supply all that environmental pressure.
And then there's all those evolving predator-prey relationships, bird/insect plant symbiotic relationships, foliage changes, the arising of grasslands and the spread of deciduous trees, and that's only the tip of an enormous iceberg of other environmental changes.
Species can adapt to some of those, but they certainly cannot mutate themselves to survive them. In addition to which, environmental changes like those above do not give a warning.