erous degree. For a time, tory ory cen literally) to fill it. Early members of ted to Souto creatures ty of bears. Birds, too,prospered disproportionately. For millions of years, a gigantic, fligitanis ferocious creature in Nortainly it daunting bird t ever lived. It stood ten feet could tear tty muc irked it. Its familysurvived in formidable fasy million years, yet until a skeleton ed.
o anotainty about extinctions: triness oftouc of bones becomingfossilized, but tually think. Consider dinosaurs.
Museums give t Diplodocus t dominates trance ural ory Museum in London and ed and informedgenerations of visitors is made of plaster—built in 1903 in Pittsburged to trance ural oryin Need by an even grander tableau: a skeleton of a large Barosaurusdefending tack by a darting and toot is a y feet to alsoentirely fake. Every one of t. Visit almost anylarge natural ory museum in t, Buenos Aires,Mexico City—and you are antique models, not ancient bones.
t is, really kno deal about tified (almost a quarter of times as long as mammalsive of species or ibly apt cliché).
For millions of years t a single fossil been found.
Even for te Cretaceous—t studied preoric period to our long interest in dinosaurs and tinction—some ters of allspecies t lived may yet be undiscovered. Animals bulkier tyrannosaurus may . Until very recently everyt t ting just sixteen species. tiness ofto t dinosaurs already occurred.
In te 1980s a paleontologist from ter So conduct an experiment. Using t also ionin Montana. Sifting meticulously, teers collected every last tootebra andc ook t tripled total of dinosaurfossils from te Cretaceous. tablis dinosaurs remained numerousrigo time of t impact. “to believe t t gradually during t taceous,” Sed.
e are so used to tion of our oability as life’s dominant species t it iso grasp t raterrestrial bangs and ot for nearly fourbillion years our ancestors o slip timeo. Step succinctly in a icular line never f