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.

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