chapotraphouse

Yeah, that is true. Still, primates at least had a pretty good base from which to work towards evolving to use tools - hands, relatively high intelligence, and decent lifespans. I don't even know how you'd go about giving a dolphin or ravens grippers. Octopi and rats have a decent base to work with in terms of grabbing things, but they would need to evolve to extend their lifetimes several times over before they could reasonably maintain a civilization.

Tbh as someone else said, it's most likely some other primate species would take over in the meantime since they're much closer.