Star Trek: 10 Huge Discoveries That No One Cared About
7. Some Dinosaurs Escaped Extinction And Became Sentient
So not only were humans not the first intelligent life on Earth, but neither were whales.
In the Voyager episode Distant Origin, we learn that about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous period) a species of Hadrosaur survived the mass-extinction of the dinosaurs and escaped Earth to eventually evolve into the Voth, a humanoid reptilian empire with technology far beyond the Federation.
The Voth actively try to suppress this knowledge, which explains why none of them seem interested in their lost home but after this one episode, Starfleet never makes any attempt to learn more about their distant cousins. Perhaps they simply fear the repercussions of questioning the dogma of the Voth, as we have seen that their technological power far exceeds most species in the galaxy.
The Voth are eventually brought up in the MMO Star Trek Online where they command armies of T. rexes against the Federation. Needless to say, an expansion on this story would be incredibly weird.