so, let's go back 65 million years.

there are both coniferous and deciduous trees. plants have flowers. there are birds chirping in the trees. many mountain ranges exist in similar forms as they do today, although they might be a little bit less eroded. but in general the landscape looks pretty similar. maybe everything isn't in the right place, but the general gist of it all is the same.

except there's these huge dinosaurs roaming around like they own the place.

doesn't anyone else find that kinda trippy?

we watched a film in historical geology about the extinction of the dinosaurs the other day, and it just hit me how... constant it makes everything seem that so many things could have been the same, except for a few major changes.

i mean, sure, the flowers and trees and such wouldn't have been any species that exist today, but who, outside of botanists or gardening freaks, would be able to tell? we might recognize something as unfamiliar, but would probably assume that it could just be a species from a different region, not from 65 million years in the past.

the (last) mass extinction of the dinosaurs was only one of many mass extinctions in earth's history, but it was the end of something that we really consider a dynasty. there are times when 70% of the earth's species went extinct, but they were primitive species so those events really don't grab our attention. but the dinosaurs... if something could kill the dinosaurs, it could kill us, and we realize that. and maybe, 65 million years later, there would be a species that would study our bones and our remains and the fossils of our cities in the exact same way that we study the dinosaurs.