If you look at life on earth over time it seems to follow a pattern: Things evolve to fit a nitch they stay in that nitch until something replaces them in that nitch. It does not seem to deviate from that pattern even among our supposed precursors.
Our supposed ancestors fit the former rather than the latter, we advanced more in the 10k years after the Younger Dryas than any creature that has inhabited this ever.
From Svalbard in the north to smoking hot deserts, we humans create our own conditions of life -- that is, unless politicians get too big for their britches, at which time we do without politicians for a while.