The story of millions of years part 11
LATE CRETACEOUS
North
America….. 72 Million
Years Ago
For days the volcanoes had erupted, the earth itself
trembling, reshaping and reforming as to the west a mountain chain arose, its
tall, jagged peaks destined to scratch the sky.
Yet in their infancy, the peaks were red raw, open fissures
spewing molten rock on to the surrounding land, burying and poisoning
everything for several hundred miles.
Forests had turned from green to grey, choked in ash, their
potential crushed, and a beautiful, brilliant sunset stretched taut across the
sky; a crimson tableau as the evening sun tried hard to peer through the toxic clouds.
The world had changed, the plants gone, the ground soft, and
yet the herd had returned; finding nothing familiar where they stood, mute and
uncomprehending in this strange land.
Here they would excavate nests, line them with broken
shoots, bury the eggs until it was time for them to hatch. But there were no
nests to reuse, no twigs and branches to pull and drag into place, and no
chance to see a new generation born. Instead they stood or walked aimlessly
through the silent, soft landscape, the only sound a steady crunching
underfoot.
Their world had changed and left them behind.
These animals would die, their journey over, like fish
having swum upstream to spawn, they were empty, used up, and too few to return.
But for others of their kind, further east, this pattern
would continue, those that browsed the lowland forests, where a rain of ash did
not fall, where the landscape remained solid and predictable, where with each
migration, each new generation, their strengths would be passed on, strengths
that would see their species survive.
The red sunset gave way to a red dawn; the long dark night
over. To the east, orange fire touched the sky, diminishing in brightness as
the day rose.
Treetops poked their crowns above the fresh, black ground,
long, twisted leaves previously out of reach; hard, waxy leaves offering little
in the way of nutrition, but with everything else buried, the creatures ate
them, found something at least to fill their hungry guts, and they were not
alone in their hunger, for there were other hunters, hungry on the volcanic
slopes, two-legged hunters that traversed the hills in packs, beasts that knew
nothing of lava and the beauty of ash-filled sunsets, but had waited patiently
to gorge on the colour red.
Now their time to feed was here, the herds had arrived, and
with them came their own chance to breed.