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snowwritesall · 6 years ago

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Writing update #2 Anathema + new WIP!

Hi folks, hope y'all have been doing well and staying healthy - I've had a pretty trying week and my financial situation is gonna be tight at best for the next few months but I'm still trying to maintain a positive outlook. With that being said, I'm gonna give you guys some updates and excerpts on my current WIP, Anathema, and a new novel that I started the other day (yes I'm well aware I have way too many wips but I'm dumb and listen to no one's advice :)

Anyway, that being said, onto the updates!

Anathema is my surreal sci fi novel that I came up with last year and has spent many months under development. A brief summary on the novel for you!

The tea on my novel:

I absolutely love the concept of my novel - keeping in mind that there is a lot of the plot hidden because I don’t want to spoil the entire book - however, there are a lot of things that need work. Seraph - my main character - still feels a little flimsy and underdeveloped - as well as my side characters, who have had limited interactions with Seraph throughout the novel as far - mainly due to the reason that I’ve been focusing on narrative rather than characters. The next thing that I’m finding is a problem is that there’s barely any dialogue between what character interaction I do have. I’ve been focusing a lot on the vibe and feeling of my book - I really want to create an eerie, almost alien feel, without being fully horroresque - think Coraline x Limbo.

The things that I do like about my novel:

- I really love the literary devices that I’ve come up with to help give the story that eerie vibe I want.

a) Really weird rhetorical questions

b) interjections of two unknown characters that comment on Seraph and his friends when they’re together

c) POV of animals and inanimate objects

Here are some examples of both:

a) Really weird rhetorical questions

The wind seems strangely muted to Seraph, as if moving through a half-awake dream, or sinking in murky water that chills the bones.

Why does the water hurt? This is only one of the questions hurtling through his mind, but there are many more barrelling inside his head; a turbulent chamber of thoughts and unspoken quandaries that crescendo in the night hour. He is curious. And that - that, is what will save him.

ai)

The beetles crawl up the blackened bark, wings glistening from between the cracks. They make soft, chittering noises as they climb aimlessly up the branch. Their path is strangely linear, their wings a malachite soaked fluorescent in the bitter, fuse sharp breeze. If they were to travel down the length of Seraph's spine; their strange, crackled wings fluttering against his ashen, ghostly skin; they would calm him as they walked up the shallow curve of his spine and nestled in his hair, a dim saucer of moonlight that they would bathe in.

Is the moon ever lonely?

b) Interjections of two unknown characters that comment on Seraph and his friends when they’re together

“What was it like?”

His voice shakes as he asks, still staring at his hands. Wilbur is teething his lip, his jaw hardening like clay left in the sun.

“Were there others? Are we the only ones left?”

Are we the only ones left?

They both look scared, don’t they?

No. Not scared. Doomed.

Why are they doomed?

Because they were never meant to be here.

Wilbur continues to stare out at the forest, and after a moment takes a few steps forward, shoveling his feet into the soil; the wind rifling through his clothes. He looks like a scarecrow made of marble, distant, ghostly - not real.

Were any of them real?

c) POV’s of animals

Seraph had stroked the snake gently, the scales cold and undulating under his fingers, the snake mothers eyes dark and pupils, her nose nudging the wings of the fledglings.

“Don’t eat your babies, mother snake. They love you. Don’t leave them.”

I have found my new children. My own children were buried in a sandstorm, and I milked my venom from my teeth on the carcass of a deer. There was no one to sing them to sleep as they died. I will listen to this strange boy. I will take care of my children.

I will not leave them.

ci)

The forest is very cold for us. Even we, with our wings like a shield and a fur coat, even we feel the wind. The bark splinters are like earthquakes under our feet, even though there have been no earthquakes for centuries. We remember. We remember when the earth shook and trembled, and when we would seek shelter amongst the splintering trees and scuttle for cover under broken fern leaves. He comes to see us. The boy with curious eyes that glint like the rock in the sky, his hands are as pale as the eggs the birds lay. He brushes his fingers across our coats, and we shiver; with a strange fear and an even stranger contentment. We are not alone.

He is not alone.

Here are some excerpts from the novel that I really like:

- POV of the boy that drowned in the lake. Seraph remembers this when he looks at the jars of butterflies that he keeps on his windowsill. The clear, glossy surface reminds him of how the lake looked when he watched some of the village men pull the boy’s body out of the lake.

- Seraph is remembering the first time that one of the children stuck their head in the guillotine in the schoolyard. He remembers thinking how odd it was that they would have something so dangerous where children could find it. Maybe they wanted them to use it.

Seraph is watching his school teacher polish the guillotine blade through the cover of pine trees. One of his friends, Beluah, creeps up behind him and startles him. They both watch the teacher and talk.

More commentary of Seraph and Beluah watching the teacher together:

Okay, that’s all on this novel for now, onto the new WIP!

Basically, this idea arose from two things - I felt like I was constantly writing in the same sort of style - ie, cold rivers, frost, rain, foggy forests - and I was majorly inspired by Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Alysse Near. This woman has an absolutely INCREDIBLE writing style - I would compare it to the bright and shiny treasures that magpies collect, and her plot and characters are amazing; so a big part of why I’m writing this is because of her.

The characters appeared really easily to me, and after only a few minutes, I already could feel them writhing around alive inside my mind. But, before I tell you about the characters, a summary of the novel for you!

When three dead girls show up at school with flowers where their eyes should be and birds living in their chests, Ariel isn’t sure what to think. She’s never really been sure what to think, since her mother sells beads and homemade jewelry for a living and her sister is a snake. Well, two snakes, really. Her parents keep strange things in the closet, like elephants with jellyfish swimming in their stomachs and siamese twins with leopard skins in the attic. And then there’s that strange girl that lives in the mirror.

When three dead girls demand to be brought back to life, you start to panic a little when you realise the closest things you’ve made come alive are the ragdolls in your toy chest.

It gets even worse when they tell you you only have a month or they’ll take you back to the underworld with them. Then you really begin to freak out. And begin to have a mental break down in the middle of class which involves involuntary tap dancing (Except the tap dancing is actually crying. Ariel doesn’t own tap dancing shoes. Not even doll tap dancing shoes.)

It doesn’t help when your best friends are literally ragdolls. She actually has a few real friends. I promise.

Now onto my babies/kids/characters!

Ariel Hakens:

has a big giant ball of curly red hair that she likes to dye a new colour every week. She likes glitter but also loves black. Big boots and shiny raincoats are a thing. She love to collec. She loves to garden, but her methods are...unorthodox, shall we say. Loves Edgar Allen Poe, and recites it to herself on the way to school. Does she ditch a lot? Maybe. Who knows. Can apparently see the dead and do weird stuff nobody should be able to. Favourite animals are mice and rats. Is fascinated with the legend of the pied piper. Is like a beaver in the fact that she chews pencils. They’re basically like a midnight snack for her. Favourite foods are peanut butter and cherry tarts.

(yes I am fully aware this is Leigh-Anne Pinnock from Little Mix, but this is what she looks like in my head)

Gwendolyn Spires:

She is as extra as the name sounds. She dreams of participating in an illegal dance competition in an abandoned subway tunnel. Her mother is the principal of a ballet boarding school, and highly disapproves of her daughter's skateboarding fetish. Her father is completely on board with it, and also her addiction to gumballs and love for all things haunted. Yes, those spell books are completely real. The amount of salt rocks she keeps in her bag would put a shaman to shame. African American.

Indie Brooks:

She’s basically a giant nerd, but covered with tattoos. And piercings. She actually needs those glasses, and she refuses to put in contacts for fear that the government will be able to read her mind. She has a conspiracy theory Youtube Channel, but her theories are really??weird??

Think: we are all giant animals living in a zoo for aliens

Does she have evidence: Yes. Is it sketchy evidence? Also yes.

May or may not have broken into area 51.

Native American/Latina.

Callum Prikhill:

pervy, but not in a sexual way. Will he sell you exam answers in exchange for candy? Possibly. Ironically wears caps. Unironically wears light up shoes. Likes sci-fi movies from the early 70’s. Skinny dipped and LOVED it. Is a theater boy. If he were an animal he would be a lizard. His mother is a low-end movie producer and his father is an accountant. Often stays at his nan’s place a lot because she has a hidden bunker under the house and he very much down for that. Because the acoustics are amazing.

The first time Ariel saw the three dead girls sway through the doors of Helkbud Senior Preparatory School, she was whistling Sissyneck while flipping through her collection of rained on vinyls that she’d chanced to pick up from the thrift store, her tanned dewy legs slick with snow and hail as she pushed hot pink cat eye sunglasses up her freckled nose.

They looked like nesting dolls all jumbled up in a lolly bag, corpse candy sucked dry of their colour and watermelon blush that should have twisted their cheeks into marionette smiles.

The girl in the middle wore poppy red heels that spun and shone like a disco ball at a teenage party where the parents were gone for the weekend and everyone was drinking punch mixed with vodka in cheap, crinkly red cups; and was the shortest of the three; yellow daisies and white crocuses growing out of her eye sockets, petals drinking salty tears out of a chipped watering can that dangled over her head.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my WIPs, and I’ll keep updating about them as I continue to work on them :)

That’s all for now, folks!

- Bella.

#writing #writblr #writers #writercommunity #writeblr #reading #books #novels #lovewriting #wips #writingwip #words #my words #glitter #so much glitter in this one guys

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riverofhistory · 6 years ago

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Episode 6: The Age of Mammals

The following is the transcript for the sixth episode of On the River of History.

For the link to the actual podcast, go here. (Beginning with Part 1)

Part 1

Greetings everyone and welcome to episode 6 of On the River of History. I’m your host, Joan Turmelle, historian in residence.

Welcome to the Cenozoic Era! This is our geologic era, the one to which we’re currently still apart of. The last 66 million years of the Earth’s history, from the great extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous Period, encompasses the development of the modern world – Cenozoic, translated, means “recent life”. In essence, we’ll be staying in the Cenozoic for the remainder of this podcast. Like the Mesozoic, the Cenozoic encompasses three periods, but because of the sheer number of important events that unfolded within this time, it is perhaps more feasible to progress through this time by epochs, those categories of time that make up periods.

The first period of the Cenozoic is the Paleogene, 66 million to 23.03 million years ago, and the first epoch of that time is the Paleocene, which ended 56 million years ago. The Earth’s continents were still slowly moving northward and outward, with India in particular going at a rapid pace towards Eurasia. It, along with Africa, South America, Antarctica, Sahul (made of Australia and New Guinea), and Zealandia (comprising what will become New Zealand and New Caledonia) were all disconnected and completely surrounded by ocean, while Eurasia and North America were connected by minor land bridges. The Atlantic Ocean was still very thin compared to today, being about half its current width, and the seas around Eurasia were rather shallow.

The dreaded combination of environmental changes and the severe bolide impact that closed the Mesozoic Era had proved to not be as dramatic as the end-Permian extinction event, meaning that life only tool a couple hundred thousand years to recover rather than a few million. The oceans and the land remained desolate places in many regions for a short time. Marine communities were lesser for the better, inhabited by mollusks, echinoderms, and other invertebrate groups that were smaller than their ancestors, a similar situation to what occurred after the Permian. For a brief while, crinoids bloomed, populating the shallow seas like opportunistic weeds. In fact, most of the marine life at the start of the Paleocene were essentially species that could sustain themselves on very little plankton, which themselves were still suffering from their losses. The chalk-forming coccolithophores would never again bloom as much as they had. There were many lineages of fishes that survived the Cretaceous extinction, and they too were not very common during this time. On land, the situation was not any better. There was a short burst in the number of ferns, which often happens after a major catastrophe as their spores are easier to disperse than seeds. They rely on the wind, rather than animals, to carry them to new places, which was difficult for seed plants as animal diversity has low. Granted, many lineages made it through the extinction, even the dinosaurs (remember, one lineage of birds survived). Basically, though there were survivors among plants and animals, their numbers were low as great food webs were still recovering.

But recover they soon did. Global temperatures rose as the last remnants of the great impact-winter ceased, and the world was soon able to support great swarms of living things again. The seas returned to similar numbers of diversity as the previous Cretaceous, though there was a notable lack of giant marine reptiles this time around. Corals and sponges dotted the seafloor, while mollusks and arthropods scurried and swam about between them. The land’s ecosystems were abounding with the descendants of the surviving organisms. Flowering plants were now the dominant land plants on the Earth, with the gymnosperms and ferns second in diversity. Many parts of the world were cloaked in forests of redwoods and cypress trees, but now they were sharing their spaces with broadleaved angiosperms. For frame of reference, think of the floras commonly found in Latin American rainforests: colorful fruiting trees like citrus, papaya, avocado, and mango, climbing plants and vines that support their weight on tree trunks and branches, and palm trees. Now picture these species growing in places like modern-day Wyoming, France, and China. Remarkable right? For much of the Paleocene, the world was covered in tropical and subtropical forests and these plants supported a growing number of animal species.

From the moths emerged a new lineage, the butterflies, distinguished from their ancestors by their often clubbed antennae (as opposed to a moth’s feather-like antennae) and their habit of folding their wings vertically from their bodies (while moths mostly fold them outwards behind them or to their sides). Young butterflies are called caterpillars and these larvae were now content to attack the hordes of new flowering plants that were evolving. In response, many plants developed defense mechanisms to keep these caterpillars from fully destroying their leaves, including spines and sticky trapping-fluids and even toxins that repel would-be attackers. As an added bonus for the plants, some species of wasps began to hunt caterpillars and parasitize them, a step-up for those species who preyed on beetle grubs during the Cretaceous.

Our three living lineages of mammals survived into the Paleocene, alongside a few other groups that eventually would not make it to the present day. Mammals lasted through the extinction event because of two key factors: they were all small enough to seek shelter in inconspicuous places like burrows, and they had strong omnivorous diets that allowed them to live on any conceivable food source. Now that most of the predatory dinosaurs that feasted on them were gone, and that the niches of these and all the other giant reptiles were left open, the mammals had a chance to take over the roles of major herbivores and carnivores in their ecosystems. However, they did not suddenly begin producing multi-ton species, and for the duration of the Paleocene the largest the mammals got was as big as a sheep or a large dog. Despite this, there was a great diversity present, with more and more of the modern mammal groups establishing themselves. In the Cretaceous, the monotremes had a global range, while the marsupials and their relatives were confined to Asia. Marsupials had made it to North America during the Cretaceous, but their numbers were decimated following the Cretaceous extinction, and only a few tiny populations were left. It was in South America, where they survived in significant numbers, that they left their mark. Paleocene South America in particular was rampant with the ancestors of the opossums, who were mostly arboreal marsupials that fed on insects and leaves.

That third great group of living mammals, the placentals, were to be the ones who dominated that continent, and indeed most of the others as well. Today, placental mammals are classified into four major groups, a scheme that was slowly uncovered by anatomical studies and only later cemented by genetic testing. The xenarthrans – including sloths, anteaters, and armadillos – with slow metabolism and a peculiar arrangement in the bones of their hip and spine. The afrotheres – including elephants, sea cows, and a host of smaller groups – with a large number of vertebrae and the setting of their permanent teeth occurring later than most mammals. The laurasiatheres – including bats, shrews, and the majority of carnivorous and hoofed mammals – primarily united by genetic traits, with no known anatomical similarities uncovered yet. And finally, Euarchontoglires – including rodents, rabbits, and primates – with particular adaptations in the skull. If some of these complex names sound familiar, they denote the place of origin for these placental groups. Afrotherians evolved on the African continent; Laurasiatheres originated in ancient Laurasia before it split into North America and Eurasia; Xenarthra was a South American development; and Euarchontoglires appears to have risen in somewhere in Eurasia. All the current evidence we have indicates that these groups were present at the start of the Paleocene.

Among many of these placental mammal groups were a host of strange lineages that left no descendants, but it was these that were to become the prominent predators and prey of the Paleocene mammals. The herbivores were represented by slow-moving, stocky-bodied animals that walked on the soles of their feet. These were browsers who cropped up plants with low-crowned teeth, that is, teeth that is shortened and flattened. The best studies we have suggest that these mammals were at least related to living hoofed mammals or ungulates, but their feet were tipped with blunt claws rather than hooves. One group of these, the taeniodonts, shifted their diet to feast on hard roots and tubers by extending their front teeth into tusks and chisels. Hunting these were the creodonts, a now-extinct group with possible ties to living carnivorans (the group that includes the cats, dogs, weasels, and seals of today). Like the proto-ungulates, creodonts moved on the soles of their feet, but they sported clawed toes and had rows of sharp, sheering teeth in their jaws. As far as their behaviors are concerned, they do not appear to have grabbed and pinned down their prey like living cats and bears do, but instead relied solely on their head and jaws to kill.

From the laurasiatheres stemmed the earliest carnivorans, who shared hunting grounds with creodonts, though they began as small, weasel-like animals with long, bushy tails. Also present were the two lines of living hoofed mammals: the perissodactyls (those with an odd-number of toes) and the artiodactyls (those with an even-number of tors). These related herbivores started out very different from each other, with the perissodactyls originating as long-bodied and long-tailed runners, having undifferentiated feet. This group would give rise to the horses, rhinos, and tapirs. Artiodactyls originated as petite animals with thin legs ending in cloven-hooves, and they seem to have been able to hop as well as run. This group is known today by the cattle, deer, pigs, and camels, among others. In Euarchontoglires, the first rodents were squirrel-like animals, already having the continuously-growing, chiseling, buck teeth that characterize the group today. These mammals would have foraged for nuts and seeds in the trees and along the undergrowth, where they encountered early treeshrews and colugos: two related lineages that feed on insects and leaves, respectively. Colugos in particular are fascinating in that they developed membranous structures along their bodies and became gliding mammals that live in trees.

Like mammals, living birds flourished at the beginning of the Paleocene, and it was the lineage that these belonged to, the Neornithes, that were the only dinosaurs to escape the Mesozoic. Neornithine birds are characterized by fully toothless beaks, and it appears that they survived because they were originally ground-dwelling species, while most of the other bird groups inhabited trees (which would have been destroyed in the ensuing chaos). As forests returned to the world, birds experimented with new lifestyles and some became arboreal. The Paleocene marks the evolution of the first waterfowl, gamefowl, and owls. By 62 million years ago, a group of birds had begun residing near seashores and adapted their wings into paddle-like structures. They had long bills for catching fish and webbed-feet to help them propel through water. These were the first penguins, meaning that birds had already returned to the seas almost immediately after the Cretaceous. Some birds lost the ability of flight and relied on their strong and lengthy limbs to carry them around the ground. Among these birds were the ratites, who today include ostriches, emus, and rheas, but there was another group of birds with affinities to ducks and pheasants that grew to enormous sizes: the gastornithids. They had very large, thick beaks for cracking open hard fruits and snapping up twiggy plants.

The true stars of the Paleocene were the other reptiles, like crocodilians, turtles, and lizards. Though the Cenozoic is often titled the Age of Mammals, for a brief time at its start the largest and most significant members of the fauna were sauropsids. This point in time is beautifully illustrated in the Cerrejón Formation of Colombia, where 60-58 million years ago there was an entire community of giant reptiles. Though crocodiles were abundant, they were not the dominant predators. They fell prey to two species: a turtle, Carbonemys, with an almost six-foot shell, and the snake Titanoboa, which spanned 42 feet in length and weighed over a ton. But faunas like this were not to last long, and as the Paleocene closed it would be the mammals who would come to dominant the land.

Part 2

The hothouse world of the Paleocene epoch only grew in temperature as it passed into the Eocene epoch, 56 million to 33.9 million years ago. The boundary between the two epochs, only lasting around 200,000 years, is known by paleontologists as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, because global temperatures soared to an average of 74 degrees Fahrenheit. This extreme jump in heat and humidity has been linked to a spike in methane emissions from the ocean floor as frozen reservoirs of the gas are thawed due to rising ocean temperatures. As we’ve seen, the oceans had already been warming for some time, so this change in temperatures would have easily released all this methane, which (being a greenhouse gas) trapped in oncoming heat from the Sun and warmed the planet. The evidence for this occurrence has been found in the way that certain forms of carbon were produced by fossil plankton from this time that match a sudden methane spike. The circulation of ocean currents brought warm water from the poles in contact with warmer water from the equator, meaning that the entire marine environment was kept consistently hot. Tropical forests did so remarkably well during the early Eocene that they stretched from pole to pole. Quite literally, in rocks found as far north as Greenland there were communities of palms, fruiting trees, and reptiles.

The Paleocene- Eocene Thermal Maximum affected a world that was still slowly changing into a recognizable form. Of importance to note for the early Eocene was one key difference in geology. In the western hemisphere, chunks of land that had begun rifting from the northwest tip of South America were slowly moving eastwards between that and North America since the late Cretaceous. Now, around 55 to 40 million years ago, these small islands had been establishing themselves near their modern localities, forming the earliest recognizable stages of the Caribbean islands. Though, briefly, the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico were to be found underneath Cuba.

In the warming oceans, planktonic species boomed and increased with diversity, with diatoms, dinoflagellates, and even coccolithophores expanding their ranges. Among these groups were the shelled foraminifera, who had already evolved over 540 million years ago. I bring them up now because we hold the Cenozoic species in very high regard: forams are one of the plankton groups that turn into oil. The process for making oil is similar to that of coal, where the dead remains of the plankton are pressed deep into the Earth and superheated till they develop into oil reserves. And just like the great trees of the Carboniferous rocks, all the carbon found in foraminiferan shells is still there. Of related interest are a subgroup of foraminifera called nummulitids, who left their giant shells behind in limestone found in present-day Egypt. It was from these rocks that the Egyptians would use to build the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids.

For the first time since the Cretaceous, reef-forming species returned in the form of the scleractinian corals who were now spreading all across the shallow-surface waters of the Earth, particularly in the Pacific and Tethys Oceans and the western Atlantic. Many of the species we know today – the brain corals, staghorn corals, and mushroom corals – were present in greater numbers than ever before. There was another new marine habitat that formed during the Eocene, the fields of seagrasses. Seagrass is not related to the grasses we know today, but instead belong to the arum, water-plantain, and pondweed group. These new and growing ecosystems supported a remarkable jump in the diversity of marine invertebrates, with mollusks, arthropods, and echinoderms in particular doing very well. Crabs and lobsters hunted among the reefs, while cowries, pen snails, and other gastropods inched along the seabed. Among the urchins emerged the very first sand dollars, who are flatter and have smaller spines than their ancestors. With the advent of the coral reefs emerged a new collection of ray-finned fishes, including all of the popular and colorful lineages like the wrasses, puffers, surgeonfishes, angelfishes, and triggerfishes. The first hammerhead and thresher sharks patrolled the waters, using unique adaptations compared to their streamlined relatives. They were joined by many lineages of giant sharks, who were able to thrive in the warmer Eocene waters and go after larger bodied prey.

There was one group of mammals who would quickly join their very distant relatives and grow into one of the most iconic and beloved of all marine species. Around 53 million years ago, two lineages of semi-aquatic mammals diverged from each other. One would prefer to stay amphibious and developed large bodies for processing land plants, becoming the ancestors of hippos. The other gradually trekked deeper and deeper into rivers and lakes and relied more on fishes for sustenance. Among these was Pakicetus, looking like a cross between a wolf and a deer, with an elongated body, tiny hooves on its feet, and large jaws full of slicing teeth. What was really peculiar about this mammal was the way that its eyes were found high on their head and how the bones in its ears were shaped for hearing underwater sounds. Later species completely abandoned a semi-aquatic lifestyle and devoted their entire lives to living in freshwater. One of these was Ambulocetus, who had webbed fingers and toes and very streamlined body like an otter. Its vertebrae were very flexible, and the animal undulated as it swam after fish. Still later the body lengthened and became much more streamlined as the animals began to rely more on their tails than their hindlimbs for swimming. It wouldn’t be long until the forelimbs developed into paddles, while the hindlimbs became much reduced as the tail grew and supported paired fins at its base. The nostrils changed too, moving further and further up the snout till they lay at the center of the head, where the eyes had moved down to the sides of their skulls. Between all this anatomical change, these mammals moved from freshwater regions to the oceans. This culminated in the 66-foot Basilosaurus and it was when animals like these lived, 40-35 million years ago, that the oceans were home to the whales. That we understand how whales evolved from land mammals and just who their closest relatives are both today and in the fossil record is a testament to the increasingly sophisticated techniques of paleontologists and other researchers in recent times.

On land, the mammals had begun to take over the Earth. In the early Eocene, the largest species had grown to the size of domestic cattle, but by the end of this epoch they had become as large as elephants. Because the Earth’s continents provide a unique perspective into the biogeography of their faunas, I will be examining mammal evolution on a continent-by-continent basis. Around 55 million years ago, the continents of Eurasia and North America were still connected together by land bridges. This allowed many of the newly evolving lineages to spread out to other lands and compete with their native species for the same resources. In North America, the first horses evolved. These were small mammals, only around 2 feet in length (comparable to some dog breeds), that ran in the underbrush of the tropical forests. They had four toes on their forefeet and three toes on their hindfeet, tipped with little hooves. These early horses were browsers who fed on the leaves of bushes with simple, chewing teeth. Over the Eocene epoch, they grew in size and began to displace some of the older hooved mammals that had dominated the Paleocene before them. Among carnivorous mammals, the creodonts were still doing well and the early weasel-like carnivorans continued to chase after small prey. The extensive tropical forests had encouraged the spread of flying insects, and this allowed one group of laurasiatherian mammals to go after them as a food source. Perhaps beginning as arboreal mammals, they developed a membranous skin across their bodies, supported by their arms and fingers, which elongated and formed a wing. These were the earliest bats, with fossils showing that they already had echolocating abilities 52 million years ago.

In Eurasia, there were clear signs of changing faunas both in Europe and eastern Asia. The squirrel-like early rodents that evolved in the Paleocene of Asia had by now spread into North America and Europe and diverged into their key lineages, including the myomorphs (mice, rats, and kin) and the squirrel and dormouse group. Related to the rodents are the lagomorphs or rabbit lineage, who evolved in Asia alongside them. The earliest members of this lineage are not hopping, long-eared animals yet, but rather scampering, marmot-like creatures. One lineage of laurasiatheres are the lipotyphlans, which is the group of mammals that includes the shrews, moles, and hedgehogs of today. Fossils indicate that this lineage evolved either in North America or Europe, with early shrews appearing in North America, and early moles and hedgehogs appearing in Europe by the middle of the Eocene. One curious lineage, the solenodons, appear to have already evolved and settled in the Caribbean, where they’ve remained ever since. In Africa, still an island continent, the afrotheres were diverging into their present-day lineages. Of primary interest are two groups that began much like the ancestors of whales and hippos did, as similar animals in both shape and habitat. In this case, the tethytheres were large, pot-bellied, pig-like animals living a semi-aquatic lifestyle and eating a wide range of different plants. One lineage of these began to develop a short proboscis or fleshy, prehensile nose that aided them in gripping leaves and twigs. Their foreheads became raised and they began to grow out their incisor teeth. This lineage became the proboscideans, the ancestors of the modern elephants. The other lineage remained semi-aquatic, but began to increasingly rely on aquatic resources as they thickened their bones to help them dive deeper and stay underwater for longer periods of time. Their snouts became downturned as their lips grew fleshy: a good adaptation if you want to feast on the groves of seagrasses that were now growing all about. Eventually, their nostrils moved to the tops of their snouts and their hind limbs became diminished while their forelimbs flattened into a paddle dotted with nails. This lineage begat the first sea cows, and became the second group of marine mammals, after the whales.

South America was another island continent, and it quickly grew to be the odd-one out for placental mammal evolution. Several groups of laurasiatheres, related to the odd-toed perissodactyls, became isolated on this great landmass. The only mammals there to greet them were the marsupials, who were mostly carnivores, and the xenarthrans, who had by now also produced the earliest armadillos. Thus, there were niches open for herbivorous animals, and they had begun to converge in body plan with their distant relatives in the northern hemisphere. In Sahul, the situation was a little different, with the marsupials now having the upper hand as the dominant group of mammals. Fossils indicate that marsupials arrived in Sahul from South America via Antarctica by 55 million years ago, and it was following that when some of them had begun to diversify into their modern lineages. They coexisted with a few placental groups, including bats, but these would remain minor elements of the Sahulan fauna.

At the end of the early Eocene, the global climate finally began to cool. Over a period of 15 million years, surface temperatures gradually crept downward, with no indication that carbon dioxide levels were changing in any significant way. It is thus unclear as to what caused this change in climate, but its effects were certainly marked in the responses of plants and animals. For one, the one-world rainforest that dominated the early Eocene had begun to be replaced by subtropical, and then deciduous temperate forests. Oaks, sycamores, pines, walnuts, and other species of gymnosperm and angiosperm trees were spreading around the planet, particularly in the great expanses of Eurasia and North America. On land, these forests supported larger and larger herbivores. In North America, horses had gotten larger and had lost one of the toes on their forefeet. Sharing that land were many new artiodactyl groups, including the first camels that lacked humps and were tiny enough to sit on your lap. The largest land mammals in the world included the dinoceratans, who ranged in Asia as well as North America. They reached lengths of 13 feet long and were often characterized by their strange bony knobs that protruded from their skulls, the function of which seems tied to sexual selection. Their often sported elongated canine teeth, tusks really, from their upper jaws, and these too appear to have been used for combat between individuals. Larger still were the brontotheres, which were closely related to horses but grew as large as 16 feet. Like the dinoceratans, they also had unique head-gear, this time a forked and flattened protuberance at the base of the snout. The structure of these ornaments has been suggested to be display structures that also could be swung at the sides of rivals, rather than head-on. These giant herbivores would have not been severely affected by any would-be predators, including a newly evolved group called the nimravids. These resembled cats, and even sported saber-teeth, but they were a case of convergent evolution that left no living descendants. They, along with the creodonts, were the main predatory mammals of the later Eocene.

The Eocene was a very good time for bird evolution too, and it marked the development of many charismatic lineages. One remarkable transformation occurred in the history of the swifts, who evolved early in the epoch. Their ancestors were nocturnal, forest dwelling birds, the same that gave rise to the whippoorwills and frogmouths. Over time, they shrunk in size, and reduced their hindlegs as they became more reliant on an aerial existence chasing after fast-flying insects. With a switch to diurnal, or day-living, activity, the swifts had arrived. Early cuckoos, turacos, mousebirds, hawks, parrots, and perching birds inhabited the trees, while early rails, cranes, loons, and herons patrolled river and lake environments, feasting on the abundance of newly evolving freshwater fishes like carp and minnows. Some birds had joined the penguins near the coasts, including the first petrels, frigatebirds, and a group of now-extinct species called the pelagornithids. These were false-toothed birds, meaning that their beaks were lined with serrated edges that functioned like teeth which could stab fish they caught. Pelagornithids have been suggested to belong to the lineage that includes ducks, pheasants, and their relatives, but the largest sported wingspans of 20 feet.

The gradual cooling that marked the middle and late Eocene epoch erupted into full swing around 36 million years ago when a sudden drop in global temperatures ended the life histories of many animal and plant lineages in the oceans and on land. While the previous bout of cooling lacked any good explanation, we at least recognize that this extremely short event was the result of the final severing of Sahul and South America from Antarctica. The three continents had been separating for some time now, but there was now such significant ocean between them that a new current formed that circled the entirety of Antarctica. This change in ocean circulation meant that the cycle of continuously warm water was interrupted, and the deep ocean waters off the coasts of Antarctica grew very cold as a result. During the long drop in temperatures at the tail-end of the epoch, there was just enough cool for small glaciers to form in Antarctica, but now with this change they grew greatly in size and width. All of that polar ice further cooled the climate, and the Eocene epoch ended with a small extinction event where many of the species that had already been adapted to the cooling world couldn’t react in time to the rapid shift. Incidentally, none of this global climate change was in any way affected by the massive bolide impact that struck the Chesapeake bay around 35.5 million years ago. Nothing too major.

Part 3

The Oligocene Epoch followed the Eocene, 33.9 million to 23.03 million years ago, and was characterized by the biggest geologic change in recent history. For millions of years since the Cretaceous, India had been moving northward at a rapid pace compared to the other continents. By the later part of the Eocene, the southern lands of Eurasia were buckling and folding as the subcontinent came closer towards it. Finally, by the beginning of the Oligocene, India had pushed itself into Eurasia. The violent contact between the two continents pushed up vast areas of land between them, beginning the formation of a new series of mountains, the Himalayas. Simultaneously, in a process that was also continuing from the Eocene, the African continent had been moving north towards Europe and Southwest Asia. Keep in mind that the modern land of Arabia belonged to the African continent at this time, though it was located on a separate tectonic plate. When Africa pushed enough into Europe, some of the land there began to rise upwards as well, forming the Alps, while chunks of land moved from the north and collided with Europe, establishing the Greek and Italian peninsulas. The Arabian plate hit Southwest Asia and brought up the Iranian Plateau. The collision of India with Eurasia marked the end of the Tethys Ocean, now replaced with the Indian Ocean. In the Pacific around 28 million years ago, the very first islands of the Hawaiian archipelago were forming, born of a chain of undersea volcanic eruptions, and Fiji formed a few million years earlier via the movement of tectonic plates.

These new mountains and highland regions contributed to the global cooling that ended the Eocene, alongside the growing Antarctic ice-sheet. In addition, a new ocean current, the North Atlantic Deep Water current, formed as the northern seas of Europe and North America had separated long enough for deeper oceans to form. Thus, the Oligocene was a cool time in the Cenozoic Era. Cold-water adapted marine organisms did very well in the colder oceans, while the numbers of coral reefs and tropical-sea species receded to warmer regions around the Equator. There was one particular site along eastern Sahul where coral species started building structures and laying the roots of the Great Barrier Reef. Some species of ray-finned fishes moved down into the deeper and darker parts of the open ocean, where they formed symbiotic relationships with glowing bacteria that they incorporated into their bodies. This gave them bioluminescence, using light to catch prey or attract mates, and some of the species that evolved from these fishes include the viperfish and hatchetfish, who would become opportunistic predators in these quiet realms. In response to the cooling oceans, many of the early whales had died out, but the remaining species still had plenty of other marine organisms to eat. For example, our modern krill lineages had evolved in the cool northern and southern oceans, and this proved to be a valuable food source for one branch of the whale family. Some of these whales had reduced or lost their teeth and went after their new prey by sucking them up with a fleshy mouth. Later descendants began to sprout filamentous folds along their jaws to filter the krill from the water. This lineage became the baleen whales, represented today by the humpback, blue, and right whales – indeed they will become the largest mammals that ever lived. Another lineage of whales retained their teeth and continued to go after cold-water fishes and squid, but they had developed a melon atop their heads. The melon serves as an organ that produces sounds, and the descendants of these mammals became the toothed whales, which include the dolphins and porpoises. On the coasts, there was another group of land mammal, related to bears and weasels, that started transitioning into a marine ecosystem. These were the ancestors of the pinnipeds: the seals, sea lions, and walruses of today. Fossil remains tell us that early pinnipeds were otter-like mammals that had webbed feet for swimming, but for the Oligocene, however, these animals were still primarily terrestrial.

The cooling and drying conditions of the planet were beginning to have major impacts on land ecosystems. Tropical and subtropical forests receded further and further into equatorial regions, and the dense deciduous forests gave way to more open woodlands and fields. In South America, this change was most drastic, as a brand new habitat developed in the east and southern regions: the pampas. This was a grassland, an environment where grass is the dominant plant and underpins the entire ecology. I’ve neglected to talk about grass, even though it appears to have evolved and diversified in the Late Cretaceous, because it wasn’t until the Oligocene onwards that these plants began to change the world. Grasses are angiosperms, with often tiny flowers that are not pollinated by insects but blown by the wind. They’re hardy and tough, with their leaves incorporating tiny silica structures called phytoliths that serve as protection from herbivores. This did not prevent some of the hoofed mammals there from venturing out onto the pampa and eating the grass. As the phytoliths can wear down teeth, these animals had to modify their teeth into grazing tools that continuously grew throughout their life. There were also groups of flightless birds called cariamiforms that began to trek out into the grasslands after prey, where they lengthened their legs to become pursuit predators. Arriving from the Atlantic were the caviomorphs, a lineage of rodents that includes the ancestors of the chinchillas, guinea pigs, and pacaranas. These rodents evolved in Africa and found their way to this continent, which could have involved a freak accident involving a storm and some islands of floating vegetation that they could have subsisted on during an unintended rafting journey.

In North America, where open woodlands spread from shore to shore, many of the animals in the earlier subtropical and deciduous forests had either gone extinct or adapted to their new environments. In one instance, crocodiles had all but vanished from the wetlands, only to be replaced by alligators, who could weather the cooler waters and even go into a dormant state and sleep out harsher conditions. Tortoises, in contrast, diversified and spread out across many different habitats, where they often grew to enormous sizes. In fact, giant tortoises had a constant presence across most continents from the majority of the Cenozoic Era, where they feasted on grasses and other low- to medium-growing plants. Mammalian faunas had shifted too. Gone were the great brontotheres and dinoceratans, replaced by different species of rhinos as the dominant herbivores. The rhinoceroses of the Oligocene would have looked only superficially similar to those of today, with some species lacking horns altogether while others sprouted a forked pair. Horses remained browsing animals, though they had now grown much larger in size, with longer limbs and more reduced toes. The camels browsed alongside them, still behaving as running, gazelle-like mammals. These were now joined by early deer, who did not (at first) have their characteristic antlers. They were small and must have timidly foraged in whatever foliage they could find. There were other, now extinct, groups of mammals sharing the North American woodlands with these more familiar groups, including the oreodonts, who looked like a cross between a camel, a sheep, and a pig. Oreodonts were very common and must have formed dense colonies as they stripped leaves from bushes and shrubs. Another group, the entelodonts, were relatives of hippos, and even sported elongated teeth in their massive heads; though, unlike hippos, they ate harder brush and seem to have supplemented their diet with smaller mammals. Hunting these hoofed mammals were the nimravids, who survived the Eocene, now joined by the first dogs or canids. The earliest dogs were almost weasel-like and scurried after smaller prey animals. The weasel family or mustelids, funnily enough, had evolved in North America by this time.

Eurasia was experiencing shifts in mammalian faunas too, as groups that resided in the eastern side of the continent moved towards Europe and displaced the species living there. Many of the older lineages, like the creodonts and the archaic hoofed mammals died out, replaced by early pigs, deer, and bears. The first cats evolved here too, with retractable claws for climbing trees, where they originally lived. Southwest Asia sported a truly heavy-weight group of mammals, the indricotheres, which were a lineage of rhinoceroses that lengthened their heads and necks to feed on the leaves of trees. They were among the largest that land mammals ever got, reaching a height of 16 feet at the shoulders and a weight of 22 metric tons. The biggest land mammals never reached the size of titanosaurs, because unlike these dinosaurs their bones were solid, not hollow, and this would have meant that their limbs could not support their weight without breaking. In one strange twist, the first hummingbirds had diverged from the ancestors that gave rise to swifts, becoming pollinating animals. These birds, first evolved in Eurasia, later migrated into South America and continued their history there. The African mammals continued to evolve in isolation, with the proboscideans bringing forth a new lineage, the mastodons. They had elongated incisor teeth, now proper tusks, and flattened heads. These great herbivores coexisted with their relatives, the hyraxes, which are represented today by small, grass-eating rabbit-like creatures but once came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Sahul’s history is a bit of a pickle for paleontologists at the moment, but we can at least be confident that the main groups of marsupials and monotremes were going about their lives.

There was a brief rise in temperatures at the end of the Oligocene as part of Antarctica’s ice sheets thawed, and the following epoch, the Miocene (23.03 million to 5.3 million years ago) was mostly characterized by a slightly warmer climate than its predecessor, but it was still much cooler than the Eocene. The Miocene marks a new period that began in Earth’s history, the Neogene, which lasted until 2.58 million years ago. The Himalayas continued to rise, and the continued pushing of Africa on Europe brought up the Atlas mountains that line Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia today. This impact of Africa on Europe had nearly enclosed the ocean and brought the Mediterranean Sea into existence. Early in the Miocene, the Rockies had started to form in western North America, with the Colorado plateau following suit by the middle of the epoch. It was there that the earliest stages of the Grand Canyon were taking hold about 17 million years ago as rivers slowly carved through the sedimentary rocks. Around 15 million years ago, tectonic activity in east Asia had officially sectioned off the Japanese archipelago from the greater landmass. Further in the southeast Pacific, Samoa and its neighboring islands were established around 23 million years ago, and the Marquesas islands wouldn’t begin to form until 5.5 million years ago.

With the conditions just right, grasslands began to spring up and took over much of the Earth’s surface as the forests continued to recede. In North America there were the prairies; in Africa the savannas; and throughout Central Asia the steppes. Grasses remained very tough plants, and they were able to regenerate their numbers following fires by placing their roots deep into the ground. That way, when a fire clears, they’re able to sprout up quickly because those organs were separated from the flames. Another group of flowering plants was able to use this phenomenon to their advantage, able to set root and grow in the charred soil as the grass returned. These were the composites, which include the modern daisies, dandelions, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and several food plants like lettuce and artichoke. Their hardy reputation and their ability to spread rapidly has earned them a harsh reputation as weeds among people today. Despite this, composites proved to be a valuable food source, as did the grasses, and this prompted many of the world’s land vertebrates to leave the forests for good and enter this new environment.

The perching birds, who evolved in the Oligocene, are characterized by their unique foot, which has special tendons and ligaments that close up the foot into a perch when on branches. They seem to have evolved in Sahul and spread out from there onto the other continents, with one subgroup, the songbirds, diversifying with the spread of the grasslands. Songbirds sing via an organ in their throat called a syrinx, which functions like a voice-box for making and amplifying complex calls. This birdsong is used to call mates, and each species has a distinct voice. The descendants of those ancestral songbirds include many familiar species like the cardinals, finches, robins, bluebirds, crows, and wrens. Among non-avian reptiles the snakes had expanded in variety, with some lineages becoming accomplished predators within the grasses, using venomous fangs to subdue and kill their prey. These prey items included amphibians like frogs, who also experienced a burst of biodiversity during this time.

Miocene mammals responded very well to the grasslands. Across the continents, rodents truly began to grow in numbers, paving the way for their lineage to be the biggest group of mammals on Earth. The myomorphs (or mouse-like rodents) really benefitted from the grasslands, with many adapting to life among the grassy-forests or taking up a burrowing lifestyle. One group, the cricetids, developed into the first voles, hamsters, and lemmings, while another group, the murids, gave rise to the proper mice, rats, and gerbils that many among our populace view as pets and pests. Another distant lineage of rodents, the castorids, included some species that formed strange corkscrew burrows that extended over eight feet into the ground. These larger rodents would give rise to the beavers. Rabbits and their kin, meanwhile, remained running animals, though uncommon in their environments.

Part 4

In North America, the hoofed mammals there were beginning to establish larger and larger sizes and they in particular adapted their bodies to the prairies in remarkable ways. In general, hoofed mammals lengthened their legs and thinned them into sturdy yet spindly structures. Their feet changed too, with more toes being lost until just one or two remained, and their hooves became more prominent, and their teeth had changed into high-crowns that continuously grew in life. For example, the horses switched from forests to grasslands and grew bigger. To run faster, they had increased the size of their middle toes and reduced those flanking them. With all the weight now being supported on one hoofed toe, they could gain traction as they pushed through the fields and run much faster than they ever could before. Camels too, grew larger and reduced their toes, till the foot was reduced to a double-toed, padded sole. Some were remarkably fast animals, while others grew so big that they could feast from treetops and look over all their neighbors. These camels, including Aepycamelus, resembled giraffes with elongated necks and long, thin limbs. In contrast, deer remained mostly woodland animals, and had already begun to develop antlers, though many species also sported sharp canines for fighting rivals. Joining the North American fauna were the pronghorns, who were much more diverse than today, represented by many species with branched, pointed, and curly horns. Predatory mammals too changed to suit the grasslands. The nimravids were still present, but now they were in decline, being replaced by the dogs who had grown into much larger hunters on the plains. In parallel with herbivores, carnivores started lengthening their legs and traded their climbing feet for compressed, running feet with pads on their ends. They supported their weight on their toes instead of the soles of their feet. In response to the rise of pursuit predators, grassland herbivores not only began to run faster, groups began to coalesce into herds for protection. Even with this, the predators responded, with some forming packs that worked together to single out prey and take them down.

Sea levels began to drop around 18 million years ago as Antarctica’s ice-sheet returned and began to engulf the continent. Grand forests developed in the northern hemisphere, where the gymnosperms would outdo the angiosperms and radiate into new species of pine, spruce, and fir. The drop in sea levels allowed new land bridges to form, with the one between North America and Eurasia growing in size to become the region of Beringia. Now that Africa and Asia had collided together, the falling sea levels permitted the creation of the Arabian Peninsula, meaning that Africa was no longer and island continent. These changes in geography facilitated many mass migrations of animal life across the continents, allowing more faunas to be displaced and setting up the primary distributions of animal groups today.

The strange panoply of African mammals, the afrotheres, were now free to expand to other regions. The proboscideans left Africa and the mastodons were established on Eurasia and North America. Related to the mastodons were the gomphotheres that evolved in Eurasia. These large mammals had modified their lower jaws into flattened spoons and shovels, tipped at their ends with blunt and flattened teeth that would have helped them scrap tree bark and dig up roots. These shared the grasslands and woods of European and Asia with a host of different species. Entering Africa from Eurasia was a motherload of new placental groups, including dogs, cats, pigs, and rhinos. Two new groups of artiodactyls evolved in Eurasia during the Miocene and also made ventures into Africa. The first of these were the giraffids, which today is represented by a few species of long-necked, spotted giraffes and the elusive forest-dwelling okapi. In their youth, however, they were a varied bunch, with many deer and antelope like forms. The other was the bovids, the group that includes cattle, sheep, goats, and antelope. They sport horns atop their heads that are sheathed by keratin (the same substance as our hair and fingernails) and these organs continuously grow throughout their lives. The earliest bovids, incidentally, resembled small antelopes, and it was only later that the burly and strong buffaloes and cattle evolved. Also developing in Eurasia were the cats, who now had diversified into a number of different groups, including the panthers or big cats, the lynxes, the pumas and cheetahs, and the wildcats. They too entered Africa, as well as North America. So, in essence, most of the animals that define Africa – the giraffe, the black rhinoceros, the cape buffalo, the gazelle, the wild dog, and the lion – are relative new comers in the Age of Mammals.

South America, still, was an island continent, and its fauna continued to flourish in the pampa, the oldest grasslands in the world. There were some new faces, however. The other groups of xenarthrans, the sloths and anteaters, were now on the scene, with the former feasting on the leaves of trees and shrubs while the latter adapted their snouts and tongues towards the consumption of termites. The native hoofed mammals had grown in size and diversity and they came to resemble more familiar mammals overseas, like hippos, rhinos, antelope, horses, and rabbits. Some relatives of the marsupials, like the saber-toothed Thylacosmilus and the dog-like Borhyaena, became great predators in their ecosystems. Sharing their hunting grounds were the descendants of those long-legged running cariamiform birds. Called phorusrhacids, their heads grew in size and their bills were sharped at their tips. They could reach over 9 feet tall, delivering sharp kicks to their prey and grabbing small mammals in their jaws to shake them to death. There were giant birds in the air as well, including Argentavis, a relative of condors and turkey vultures but with a 23 foot wingspan. Like their living relatives, this bird would have probably been a scavenger as well.

Sahul’s fossil record becomes much better during the Miocene and we’re now able to get a good look at some of the animals that lived there. All of the modern marsupial groups were present, including the wombats, possums, dasyures, and kangaroos. Like South America, Sahul hosted a collection of large, flightless birds called dromornithids, although these were not predators but herbivores. They appear to have been related to modern waterfowl, like ducks, and you could picture these enormous birds walking along as their trails of young scurry behind them. There were other flightless birds here too, early emus and cassowaries, the later sporting a head-crest and sharp claws on their toes. Alongside a number of snakes and monitor lizards are the mekosuchine crocodiles, who were semi-aquatic hunters but seem to have been competent on dry land.

In the oceans, marine life was settling into more modern positions. Coral reefs grew in the warmer waters, nearer to the equator, and early cuttlefish patrolled the reefs in search of fish. In the more open oceans, the toothed whales had grown into a number of distinct lineages, including the sperm whales, the dolphins, and the first members of the narwhal family. Sharks and rays were diversifying too, with the earliest manta rays and basking sharks switching to a planktonic, filter-feeding lifestyle, of which the whale sharks had partaken of in the Oligocene. Among the filter-feeders were grand marine predators. Representatives of the sharks are seen in the evolution of megalodon, which has been estimated to have grown 52 feet in length. It has enormous teeth that lined jaws that could open 6 and a half feet wide. Megalodon sharks are known to have gone after whales because some remains of their prey show teeth imbedded in their vertebrae. Alongside these sharks were giant sperm whales, like Livyatan, with powerful jaws lined with curved teeth over a foot long. The modern groups of pinnipeds were now well established in the seas, including the walruses who started out with small canines and only later grew them out as long tusks.

The end of the Miocene is capped with a rather extraordinary event that unfolded between 6 million and 5.3 million years ago. While the Mediterranean Sea had been in place since the beginning of this epoch, global sea levels were dropping as Antarctica’s ice-sheet was growing. This was combined with the continuing movement of Africa into Europe, which closed off the Strait of Gibraltar between modern day Iberia and Morocco. Because of the nature of the Mediterranean, where the surrounding lands were very dry places, the sea began to evaporate rapidly. Over several periods of a few thousand years, the grand “lake” lowered more and more until finally, around 5.6 million years ago, the entire Mediterranean had dried into a basin dotted with small saltine-lakes. It wouldn’t be until 5.3 million years ago that the Strait of Gibraltar opened up again and the Atlantic poured back into the Mediterranean in a flooding event that has been estimated by some to have been torrential.

The Pliocene epoch ends the Neogene Period as a relatively short span of time, 5.3 million to 2.58 million years ago. Grasslands still dominated much of the world, while the temperate and tropical forests remained in some of the warmer regions. Changing ocean circulation promoted a brief period of warming during this time and their stirring of undersea nutrients encouraged marine communities to experience yet another period of diversity. New islands emerged in the Pacific, with Easter Island, Tahiti, and the Society Islands developing around 4.5 million years ago, and the Galápagos islands emerging through volcanic activity by 3 million years ago. Sahul was now in its present day location, with the lands that would become New Guinea bordering Southeast Asia.

After being separated since the Cretaceous Period, the two continents of the Americas had finally connected together through the Isthmus of Panama, which formed 3 million to 2.7 million years ago. The ramifications of this geologic event would forever change the fauna of North and South America. Prior to the joining of the continents, North America was home to a wide range of placental mammals, including horses, camels, dogs, bears, raccoons, and mustelids, all of which evolved there millions of years ago. Mastodons and gomphotheres had arrived there from Asia in the Miocene, adding some megafauna to the mix. South America had a much more unique fauna, full of armadillos, anteaters, sloths, marsupials, caviomorph rodents, native hoofed mammals, and giant flightless birds. Once the Isthmus of Panama was established, the animals on these two continents began to migrate in opposite directions and populate the new territory, in an event that paleontologists have dubbed the Great American Interchange. Sloths and armadillos moved into North America, including some enormous forms like the ground sloths. Marsupials finally returned there, of which one species – the opossum – survives today. Some of the South American caviomorphs made it into North America too, but like the marsupials only one held out, the porcupine. In contrast, it was the mammals from the northern continent that really disrupted South America. For the first time, bears, dogs, cats, raccoons, deer, camels, horses, and proboscideans entered that land. There was a period of competition between these immigrants and the already present carnivores and herbivores, but in the end the predatory marsupials, giant running birds, and native hoofed mammals were pushed into extinction.

By the Pliocene, most of the horses had died out, leaving one lineage left that had finally lost all of its digits save for their middle toe, which had now fully formed into a thick hoof. They ran freely through the grasslands of North and South America, grazing on the tough, fibrous grasses with their specialized, high-crowned teeth. Rhinos had pretty much died out in North America, only surviving through the species that escaped over Beringia into Eurasia and Africa. Camels still roamed the Americas, including some giant species, but they were also now surviving in fewer numbers. Some had managed to leave over Beringia, but many found a comfortable home in South America, particularly near the Andes mountains. Deer, cattle, sheep, and goats had finally entered North America from Eurasia and they were now very recognizable, with their antlers and horns. The ancestors of the modern dog species, including the first foxes and wolves, had managed to spread all across the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa, and the bears had grown to immense sizes and became the omnivores we know today. Mustelids – the weasel family – also had a great spread between the Americas and Eurasia, and the modern members of the group (the otters, badgers, weasels, and minks) were on the scene. From among the cats had emerged one particular lineage of hunters, the machairodonts or the true saber-toothed cats. Since the saber-toothed adaptation had evolved several times among mammals it really is a curious question as to how it was used. The teeth would have been strong but fragile, and any contact with hard surfaces like bone would see them cracked, so it seems highly likely that saber-toothed predators used their teeth to pierce the windpipes and underbellies of their prey.

Africa’s fauna underwent a similar situation in the Americas. When the great herds and packs of hoofed mammals and carnivores had entered the continent, there was a slight displacement among some of the native afrotheres. The hyraxes, for example, had been the dominant herbivores prior to the forging of the Arabian Peninsula, but by the end of the Pliocene they had been outcompeted by the antelopes, giraffes, bovids, and rhinos. Nearly all of them went extinct, save for one lineage who carries on their legacy today as small, rabbit-like animals. The other afrotheres had escaped competition by having already occupied specific niches, including the aardvark, which is a nocturnal, burrowing animal that feasts on termites. Australia’s ecosystems were undergoing a slight change as grasslands finally began to spread there and replace the tropical forests of old. Some of the marsupials adapted well to this, like the kangaroos and wallabies, who lengthened their legs and feet and started hopping instead of running.

At the end of the Pliocene, the Earth’s climate cooled again, but this time it was so great that the first glaciers formed in the Arctic region. The growth of the ice sheets promoted the development of the tundra, which was bordered by the boreal forests of conifers. Animal life responded to these changes, and many species became adapted to the tundra environment, including deer, bovids, bears, cats, and rabbits. Why was this cooling so dramatic? Throughout the Earth’s history, the planet undergoes a shift in its orbit every 100,000 years or so. This shifts the direction of the Earth’s axial tilt and effects the seasonality of the planet towards cooler or warmer conditions. However, this did not previously change the Earth in such a way as to encourage glacial growth like this, for as we’ve seen there have only been a few ice ages in the entire lifespan of the Earth so far. Therefore, it seems likely that this shift or Milankovitch Cycle was exacerbated by the events occurring on the Earth’s surface. The great rise of mountains like the Alps and the Himalayas had changed the circulation of air currents, and the collision of continents had modified the direction of the ocean currents. The circumstances were just right for an extreme ice age to occur, and occur it did! The beginning of the most familiar Ice Age marked the closing of both the Pliocene epoch and its encompassing period the Neogene.

And with that, we must lay anchor to our river journey. And we must conclude our story of life on Earth. For the next episode, we’ll need to backtrack a bit, because I purposely neglected to explain the evolution of one particular group of mammals, the primates. We explore their history and then finally begin cataloging the evolution of the hominins, the lineage to which the ancestors of all humanity belong.

That’s the end of this episode of On the River of History. If you enjoyed listening in and are interested in hearing more, you can visit my new website at www.podcasts.com, just search for ‘On the River of History’. This podcast is also available on iTunes, just search for it by name. A transcript of today’s episode is available for the hearing-impaired or for those who just want to read along: the link is in the description. And, if you like what I do, you’re welcome to stop by my Twitter @KilldeerCheer. You can also support this podcast by becoming a patron, at www.patreon.com/JTurmelle: any and all donations are greatly appreciated and will help continue this podcast. Thank you all for listening and never forget: the story of the world is your story too.

#Transcripts #On the River of History

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hatimtanger · 7 years ago

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watch Wild TV Africa HD live stream online free Now Today with high quality

?do you want to watch Wild TV Africa HD live stream online free Now Today with high quality

Wild Africa is a British nature documentary series created and produced by the BBC, it explores the natural history of the African continent. It was first transmitted on 7 November 2001 on BBC Two in the United Kingdom. The series comprises six episodes. Each concentrates on a particular environment. The producers use aerial photography and wildlife footage to show how natural phenomena such as seasonal changes influence the patterns of life. Wild Africa was produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and narrated by Fergal Keane.

The series forms part of the Natural History Unit's Continents strand. It was preceded by Congo earlier that year and followed a year later by Wild New World.

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Wild Africa typifies the style of blue-chip documentary series on which the Natural History Unit has built its reputation, with its high production values, strong visuals and dedicated musical score. To achieve this took 18 months of principal photography on 53 filming trips to 22 countries, starting in September 1999. The filmmakers were assisted by a production team of 16 and around 140 scientists and field assistants.[1] The experienced camera team included Peter Scoones, Gavin Thurston, Owen Newman, Martyn Colbeck and Simon King,[2] all of whom have contributed to many other BBC natural history films.

The filming team travelled from the lowest point on the continent, the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, to the highest, the summit of Kilimanjaro. Successes included rare footage of huge feeding groups of manta rays, and Walia ibex locking horns in the Simien Mountains.

After an opening sequence introducing the series, the first episode looks at Africa’s mountain ranges. First to be featured are the Ethiopian Highlands, the remains of a huge volcanic intrusion. Geladas survive in large groups on the cold grassy highlands and use facial expressions to resolve tensions without confrontation. Walia ibex clash horns on precipitous slopes, and Ethiopian wolves stalk grass rats and giant mole-rats. A pair of adult lammergeiers locks talons and tumbles through the air. Juvenile birds are shown practising the art of dropping bones from great heights onto rocks. In North Africa, Barbary macaques are filmed foraging in a snow-covered cedar forest in the Atlas Mountains. The Cape Highlands are Africa’s oldest mountains. Their isolation and stable climate have enabled an entire plant kingdom to evolve. Over 7000 species make up the Fynbos, and many have developed unique relationships with pollinating insects and birds. The Rift Mountains of East Africa are active volcanoes, but their lives are short in geological terms. A sequence shows mountains of increasing age, from Lengai and Kilimanjaro to Mount Kenya and finally the weathered remnants of the Aberdare Range. Their mineral-rich soils attract savannah animals including elephants and bushbucks. As the Rift Mountains have thrust upwards, they become an agent of evolutionary change as small populations of animals are isolated from their lowland relatives. Melanistic forms of servals and leopards arise mainly in the highlands. The programme ends in the heart of the continent, with scenes of mountain gorillas in the Virungas.[3]

The savannah, home to the greatest herds on Earth, is the subject of the second instalment. Despite its timeless appearance it is actually Africa’s youngest landscape, shaped by the weather and the animals themselves. As the continent dried, rainforest trees dwindled and were replaced by swathes of open woodland, thickets and grassland. Elephants, drawn from the rainforests around three million years ago, are the greatest architects of the land and are filmed pushing over trees. Primates also moved into the savannah, beginning with the ancestors of modern baboons. Grass is a vital element of the ecosystem here. Grazing herds trim the grasses, promoting rigorous growth and more numerous varieties. Seasonal rains and fires also shape the environment of the savannah. After rainfall, the plentiful grass seed triggers a race to breed for millions of red-billed queleas. Marabou storks pick armyworms from the grass and quelea chicks from their nests. The dry season can last eight months, forcing many herbivores to migrate in search of water. Wildebeest follow the rains, while elephants travel a network of paths between waterholes. Buffalos rely on tough grasses to sustain them through the lean times, but as they weaken, lions sense an opportunity. Long, narration-free, slow-motion sequences of lion and cheetah hunts are accompanied by evocative orchestral music. Night-time cameras follow rarely seen animals including aardvarks, servals and an African wild cat. The reasons for this abundance of life are the savannah’s vast size, fast recycling of nutrients and the adaptability of its wildlife.[4]

The third programme features Africa’s deserts, whose swathes of sand and rock cover half the continent. It begins in the Namib by demonstrating some of the unusual strategies that desert insects and spiders have evolved to survive. With no more than 5 cm of rain each year, this is Africa’s driest desert. On warm nights, sea fog forms over the cold ocean and blows across the dunes, bringing vital, life-sustaining moisture. Even large animals can survive here; elephants use knowledge passed down through generations to find sustenance. Nara melons make a nutritious meal, and Cape porcupines and hairy-footed gerbils take advantage too. Neighbouring the Namib is the Karoo, which benefits from winter rains. The blossoming of flowering plants in the spring is shown using time-lapse. The rains also trigger the emergence of locusts, which swarm together and destroy all fresh growth in their path. In the Kalahari, there is enough rain for grasses and stunted trees to grow. The co-operative strategies of Damaraland mole-rats, meerkats and sociable weavers are compared. The grasses support grazing animals such as springbok, which in turn attract predators. The cheetah, with its thin, lightly furred body is most at home in the desert. The Sahara is much newer than Africa’s southern deserts, the product of a rapidly drying climate coupled with overgrazing. Ancient rock art in Chad’s Ennedi Plateau shows a vanished world – giraffe, elephant, rhino and other savannah creatures. Now, the last remaining Nile crocodiles share their dwindling pools with the passing camel trains.[5]

The fourth instalment follows an anticlockwise path around Africa’s coastline, beginning at the Cape of Good Hope. To the east, the warm Indian Ocean brings moisture to the land. The coastal forests and mangroves are home to Zanzibar red colobus and mudskippers. Tree-climbing crabs feed on fresh mangrove leaves, but must descend to escape the midday sun. North of the Tropics, the Red Sea coast receives little rainfall due to the dry heat and intense evaporation. Corals thrive in the clear, warm waters and the reefs here harbour moray eels, redtoothed triggerfish and clownfish. Pelagic fish shown include barracuda, devil rays and a school of manta rays filmed feeding in formation in a Sudanese bay. On the Mediterranean coast, Eleonora's falcons time their breeding to coincide with the passage of migrating birds. Up to two million migrant waders overwinter at the Banc d’Arguin mudflats in Mauritania. The seas of equatorial West Africa are heated by the Guinea Current which brings high rainfall to the coast. Here, elephants and hippos are shown moving through the mangroves and red river hogs feeding on sandy beaches. Further south, the Namib Desert extends to the coast. The cold Atlantic waters are rich feeding grounds for Cape fur seals and penguins. Fur seal pups are vulnerable in the heat, and those that perish are picked off by black-backed jackals and brown hyenas. Around the Cape, great white sharks use a unique hunting technique to catch seals.[6]

The penultimate episode looks at the continent’s rainforests, which cover equatorial Africa from Uganda to Sierra Leone. Their extent responds to climatic variations and as this is a wet period in Africa’s history, the forests are near their maximum coverage. In the wet season, killifish hatch, grow and breed in a puddle in an elephant’s footprint and can move across land to find new water sources. Fruiting trees attract birds such as Black-casqued hornbills, great blue turacos and African grey parrots. Elephants are filmed breaking open fallen omphalocarpum fruits using their trunks, behaviour only recently discovered by scientists. The fruit eaters also help to disperse seeds. Black-and-white colobus are leaf-eaters, but despite living in the canopy, they are hunted by Biaka pygmies and crowned eagles. The Biakas also harvest yams, climb to bees nests to collect honey and use natural toxins to stun fish in the forest streams. A fast-growing giant yam exploits the gap created by a fallen tree. The yam has several defences against being eaten, including attracting aggressive ants, but a particular beetle has evolved a strategy to combat both yam and ants. Chimpanzees are filmed using sticks to extract termites and safari ants from hollow logs. At a few special places in the forests, large clearings created by elephants attract many animals to socialise, reinforce bonds and feed on the mineral-rich ground. One such clearing is Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic, visited by 2,800 elephants, shy bongos and western lowland gorillas.[7]

The final programme looks at how water influences life on the continent. Rain falling on the mountains of equatorial Africa eventually flows into Nile, Congo, Niger and other great rivers. The Luangwa, a tributary of the Zambezi, draws animals from the surrounding arid lands. Predators and prey drink alongside one another in an uneasy truce. The waters hold dangers too; a Nile crocodile attacks a buffalo. When river levels fall, hippos are forced together and sometime fatal territorial fights ensue. Crocodiles are filmed tearing flesh from a hippo carcass. Carmine bee-eaters excavate nest chambers in exposed river banks, but African fish eagles and monitor lizards prey on the birds and their eggs. The lakes of East Africa hold most of the continent’s fresh water. Over 600 species of cichlid have evolved in Lake Malawi, each occupying their own niche. The fish and migrating birds feast on a seasonal bonanza provided by clouds of black flies hatching on the water’s surface. Africa has great wetlands too. Zambia’s Banguela Swamp is a rich fishing ground for shoebills, spoonbills and egrets. The Okavango River flows towards the Kalahari Desert, creating the greatest inland delta in the world. It is paradise for hippos, but savannah animals have had to adapt. Lions have learned to swim across the water channels to keep up with their prey. The final scenes show the vast flocks of flamingos at the soda lakes of East Africa. Every few years, they engage in synchronised courtship dances.[8]

Wild Africa won two awards at the 2003 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in the Best Limited Series and Best Cinematography categories.[9] The series was also nominated for its photography at the 2001 BAFTA Craft Awards.[10]

A book, soundtrack CD, and DVD are all available to accompany the TV series:

A Region 2 and 4, 2-disc DVD set was released on 18 July 2005 (BBCDVD1700) featuring all six full-length episodes and the bonus documentary "The Super Herd" from the Wildlife on One series. Wild Africa is one of four series which comprise the Region 1 DVD box set BBC Atlas of the Natural World: Europe and Africa, released on 2 October 2007.

The accompanying hardcover book, Wild Africa by Patrick Morris, Amanda Barrett, Andrew Murray and Marguerite Smits van Oyen, was published by BBC Books on 1 November 2001 (ISBN 0-563-53790-6).

An original orchestral soundtrack CD, composed and conducted by Christopher Gunning, was released by BBC Music on 19 November 2001.

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