Childish playthings.
Nothing in this life is forever.
Few species in earth’s history can surpass the dramatic tale of the dinosaurs: their majestic size, their carnivorous savagery, and most famously, their spectacular extinction 65 million years ago.
From the slothful brontosaurus munching and wallowing in the swamplands, to the ferocious iron-jawed tyrannosaurus (an unfortunate creature said to have appalling halitosis), these lumbering behemoths ruled the planet for an eternity, a 100 million years or more, inhabiting land, sea and air.
Then something happened, and they disappeared, every single one of them; now just scattered bones and teeth, a few giant eggs buried in rock, are all that we know them by.
Paleontologists disagree about their miserable end. Yes, there was an asteroid impact, perhaps several, which provoked first a nuclear winter and then a climatic greenhouse inferno. The fossil record also suggests another story: the age of the dinosaurs had been waning for millions of years before the coup de grâce. Their time, it seems, had come because other orders of life, more supple and adaptable than they, had evolved in the earth’s gently cooling climate and all the specialist food chains upon which the old order had depended were being choked off.
What did for the dinosaurs its seems was less a single cataclysmic incident, than a slowly unfolding evolutionary process. They had became supernumerary, ill-equipped, and incompetent in the face of contending forces and changing conditions. If only they could have downsized and changed their diets, have learned to adapt. Alas they were not as clever as the mammals, snapping at their evolutionary heels.
Their memory lingers in the popular imagination: the world’s most powerful creatures turned to dust, nothing much more these days than plastic playthings, an ignominious fall from glory.
Thus it is that the mighty and powerful, blinded by their magnificence, can rarely foresee their impending downfall.
Note: these silly musings were suggested by reports of the Councillors Noel and Jayne Roberts playfully sporting plastic dinosaur toys at the Ledbury Town Council meeting on 22 July 2015. Ha, ha. What a delightful sense of humour they have.
Few species in earth’s history can surpass the dramatic tale of the dinosaurs: their majestic size, their carnivorous savagery, and most famously, their spectacular extinction 65 million years ago.
From the slothful brontosaurus munching and wallowing in the swamplands, to the ferocious iron-jawed tyrannosaurus (an unfortunate creature said to have appalling halitosis), these lumbering behemoths ruled the planet for an eternity, a 100 million years or more, inhabiting land, sea and air.
Then something happened, and they disappeared, every single one of them; now just scattered bones and teeth, a few giant eggs buried in rock, are all that we know them by.
Paleontologists disagree about their miserable end. Yes, there was an asteroid impact, perhaps several, which provoked first a nuclear winter and then a climatic greenhouse inferno. The fossil record also suggests another story: the age of the dinosaurs had been waning for millions of years before the coup de grâce. Their time, it seems, had come because other orders of life, more supple and adaptable than they, had evolved in the earth’s gently cooling climate and all the specialist food chains upon which the old order had depended were being choked off.
What did for the dinosaurs its seems was less a single cataclysmic incident, than a slowly unfolding evolutionary process. They had became supernumerary, ill-equipped, and incompetent in the face of contending forces and changing conditions. If only they could have downsized and changed their diets, have learned to adapt. Alas they were not as clever as the mammals, snapping at their evolutionary heels.
Their memory lingers in the popular imagination: the world’s most powerful creatures turned to dust, nothing much more these days than plastic playthings, an ignominious fall from glory.
Thus it is that the mighty and powerful, blinded by their magnificence, can rarely foresee their impending downfall.
Note: these silly musings were suggested by reports of the Councillors Noel and Jayne Roberts playfully sporting plastic dinosaur toys at the Ledbury Town Council meeting on 22 July 2015. Ha, ha. What a delightful sense of humour they have.
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