They emerged from the cave to a shattered landscape. Gone was the lush forest and the sounds of birds and distant cries of large beasts in the distance. In the place of the sounds of nature was an eerie silence and a strong odor of sulphur and ash. It had been some time, over a year, but it was a world away from the landscape they had become so familiar with.
“What the hell happened?” she asked.
“It’ll come back,” he said. “We know it will.”
He knelt down toward the ground and examined a curling green fern frond that was starting to sprout from beneath the ash. The first sign of life of the new Tertiary period was poking its way through the ruin.
“I guess life is more resilient than we thought,” she said as a small mouse like creature scurried across a charred log near her feet. “There’s some animal life.”
As they walked a few hundred yards from the mouth of the cave, they came upon the charred skeletal remains of a Triceratops. About a half mile later, they came to the scattered bones from a larger reptilian, probably an Apatosaurus (brontosaur) or creature equally as large.
Over the weeks, more plant growth began to poke through the ash and cinders, and by the time summer arrived, everything was green, save for the eerie skeletons of charred tree trunks which would dominate the landscape for years to come. Most of the early growth was spore producing ferns, low lying moss and spindly grasses, but as they gradually approached a row of mountains in what would later become the Eastern United States, they made an astounding discovery.
“This forest looks like it has hardly been touched!” said Dr. Hillingsworth as they came upon a small area that covered about a half acre.
“Look at a couple of these mountains,” said Johnson. “They shielded this little tract from the blast.”
“And the acid rain? How could anything survive that?”
“The forests in the United States are surviving quite well with the shit we’re pumping out into the environment in the twenty first century,” he said. “Maybe they’re a little more resilient than we thought.”
“Prevailing winds would have shielded them from the blast, and probably a lot of the ejecta too. Then the rock and soil filtered the groundwater enough so they had a healthy water source. The nitric acid damaged the leaves and needles, but as the sun came back out they grew new ones.”
“Or maybe this wasn’t quite as bad as we thought.”
“Oh, it was,” she said. “Remember, the dinosaurs are all gone!”
“They were too big, they had nowhere to hide. These little grottoes wouldn’t have sustained one for very long.”
“Lots of mice,” she said as she watched small mammals scurry out from under virtually every downed log. “Or whatever they are!”
“Just don’t step on any!” he said. “We don’t know if we’d be killing our own grandmothers!”
“Hard to believe that some of these little guys will grow up to be whales and elephants!”
He looked a little deeper into the small hamlet of nearly undisturbed woodland. True, there was some evidence of damage by fire and chemical, but not much. As he ventured deeper into the woods, he found even more life. Small birds, reminiscent of parakeets, perched in the branches of gingkoes and Metasequoia. Insects buzzed about, spiders spun webs, and near a small spring, swarms of mosquitoes flourished. He grabbed a bagful of smelly gingko fruit and wandered back out to the charred edge of the forest where Sarah was still standing.
“It’s absolutely amazing!” he said. “It’s like a little oasis in there!”
“Of course!” I bet there are hundreds, if not thousands of these little patches left around the whole planet!”
He looked to the ground where a few dried shells of seeds and leaves had been deposited by wind and birds. A couple of them had begun to sprout.
“This little patch is already starting to spread, already starting to propagate itself. In a matter of years, these saplings will be grown enough to bear fruit, and those will sprout a few more feet out, then a few more, and so on. Give it another six, eight, even ten years, this little patch will double in size, and then double or triple again. In a century, most of this forest will be replaced to some degree!”
That’s how it would begin. First, slowly the forests would return. The forests would provide food and habitat for the animals that lived in this little sheltered haven, and as their populations flourished unchecked by larger creatures either out competing or by means of predation, they too would wander out farther into the scorched world. With them they would carry the seeds for the future forests. Some would carry seed in fur. Others would carry them in their digestive tracts, and they would sprout in the barren soils when they emptied their bowels. As time would go on, the reforestation would continue at an ever accelerating rate.
Amazingly, the vegetation was returning fastest at the site of the impact. For years, the crater in the southern reaches of Mexico was nothing more than a pool of lava. The hardened lava remained bare for years, but once mosses and ferns took hold in the crevasses and folds, the glassy mass began to break down. In little over ten years, it was a lush field of saplings and leafy bushes, teeming with small rodent-like mammals and lizards. For those early years after the impact, they called this area home.
“June 14, 63,123,334 B.C.E. or somewhere close to that. The Early Paleocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period…It’s absolutely incredible how fast the Chixulub crater has begun to recover. Ten years after the incident, there is a dense growth of Ceanothus and Ginger, and among this, a few Washingtonian Palms are sticking above this low canopy. We’ve camped out here because not only is this area the most pleasant, but it is a rich place for food and sustenance. The lava beds off shore are incredible havens for fish, and the dense woods are rich in small mammals and miniature iguana like lizards, as well as a few alligator like creatures. We’re not going hungry! Not to mention, it’s definitely cheaper now than it would be in sixty three million years when they build the Club Med here! I’ve always dreamed of a vacation in Cancun, and it looks like that wish has come true !”
“Most of what has come back in is prolific and blooming. A lot of these plants have beautiful colored fruit, and most of that fruit is turning out to be not only edible, but quite tasty. I thought for years that plants would make some effort to have toxic fruit to protect them from being eaten, but there’s something to be said about allowing animals to eat the fruit. It’s a great way for seeds to transport. We eat the fruit, ingest the seeds, travel a little while, then expel the seeds when we stop to take a shit. Not only does this provide a vector of population spread, but it also supplies a nitrogen rich medium for those seeds to take root in upon germination. Pretty clever! In fact, the more colorful the fruit, the better the chances of that plant’s progeny being carried on that way!”
“I found something we are both enjoying, just a little too much! A stemmy plant with clusters of elegant leaflets and a lacy bell shaped purple-green blossom. The stems are very fibrous and we’ve found this very handy in making twine and rope, which we use often for building, making paper, fish nets, and we even figured out how to weave cloth from this stuff (it makes much nicer clothing than the crunchy animal skins we’ve been using for years since our supply of clothes wore out not long after we got stuck back here…) but it also has a rather interesting euphoric effect. The blossoms, when dried, can be smoked, and it has a very pleasant effect reminiscent of a few nights I had back in the frat house when I was in College…Okay, we know damn well what this shit is! It’s in the Magnolia order, and it’s in the Cannabaide Family. The waxy resin is Tetrahydrocannibinol…we found the ancestor of modern marijuana. Fortunately, I don’t see us worrying about having any drug tests soon! We ran out of whiskey centuries ago, and until we came upon this little stand of wildwood weeds, we’ve been curtailing the partying thing for the last five hundred years. It’s interesting how this very substance keeps it from being devoured by insects, but it actually attracts not only us but the herbivorous creatures who then transfer the fertile seeds about in much the same way as mentioned before. It has another interesting effect. The more we ingest or take in, the more we eat, and this helps other plant organisms propagate. When other creatures eat this stuff, they too get the munchies, they eat more, and this gives them greater proteins, sugars and other energy to travel further and bear more young. It is one of many forces that is propelling life forward into re-establishing itself upon the face of the shattered world.
“I know we’re literally millions of years prior to the establishment of faith and religion, and the word ‘God’ in whatever form it takes first won’t be for at least sixty million years, but I still cannot help but wonder. These processes that are happening are so brilliant, and one cannot help but think there is some kind of design at work, some sort of intelligent plan put into motion. Everything we see happening has a positive and forward moving purpose. Animals are curious, and as a result their populations move and spread. With that, they carry the seed of forests and savannahs, and this is not just by happenstance. If it weren’t for the inherent wanderlust of even these simpler creatures, the forests would not be so fast in reclaiming their land. If it weren’t for the fact that plants have to produce these little bundles of proteins and sugars we call seeds to nurture and protect their progeny long enough to sprout, there would not be anything to nourish the animals who need these same nutrients. One cannot live without the other, and the fact that out of all the chemical combinations possible of both those in need and those in production happen to coincide, this whole delicate balance wouldn’t exist to begin with! Every day I see something amazing!”
“My days as a scientist had always put me at odds with those of faith. I was raised to believe in God, although I might have felt compelled to stray away from that belief when I was tasked to find answers in the name of science. As we spend our days finding our way about this world we thought we understood, I am once again finding an ever growing place for Him in my heart and mind.”
“Do you remember those islands out there from before?” she asked as they came upon the western shores of what would later become the Mexican Riviera.
“Volcanic island arcs,” he said. “Kind of like Japan and the Philippines. There were several collisions of these terraines during the early Cenozoic.”
Although the mountains on the island looked gray from the distance, it was obvious life was returning to them as well. Birds flew in immense flocks between them and the shore. Birds were somewhat plentiful before the impact, but they seemed to rule the world now. Some places along the shore lines were so populated that every branch, every rock, every patch of ground was white with droppings.
Most of the birds were reminiscent of modern parrots. The curved beaks were ideal for cracking open nuts and seeds, but they noticed in a few places that these creatures had taken to a new diet. On several occasions, they observed some of these birds in the act of swooping down on small mammals as they scurried out in the open. One time, they observed a beautiful Macaw-like parrot snatch up a large snake, just like an eagle.
With each generation, some birds grew larger. Near the shoreline, they took to scavenging among the flotsam from the waves. Inland, they varied their diet among seeds, insects, small mammals and even other birds. On one instance they built a small boat and sailed to one of the coastal islands and found that many birds hardly flew at all as they found adequate food and safety by staying on the ground.
Over the next millennium nature had taken its course and virtually all obvious traces of the great calamity were gone. Even the climate had cooled off again. Snow began returning to the higher mountaintops in the winter, and the strength of the coastal hurricanes was significantly weaker.
“August 14, 63,104,662 B.C.E…close enough! Over the last several hundred years I have come to appreciate the numerous things that we trade services with others for…namely automotive repair! We decided to take a trip up to Phoenix Arizona…or what at least will become that…and we lost a universal joint in the truck. No problem! Just stop, dig up enough iron bearing rock, build a blast furnace of rock and mud, smelt the iron out of the rock, melt it down, alloy it with charcoal to harden it…you get the idea! Thank God we’re in no hurry to get anywhere, because traveling like this takes quite a long time! We broke an axle once, and we went through the same process. It takes nearly two years to manufacture parts, when at one time we were used to walking into a nearby Napa store and buying what we need. Then there’s the thrill of actually crawling under the vehicle and installing it, with tools either fashioned from stone or at best forged from scraps of metal similarly formed. Even making the fuel to run the damn thing is complex and time consuming and makes me wonder how worthwhile it is to keep the now ten thousand year old vehicle in operation! Then again, we’ve acquired so much stuff that it is necessary…especially since there are only two of us!
“Enough ranting! I am surprised to find that the area around what will later become Guadalajara is rather dry! I thought the deserts didn’t develop in this region until the late Pliocene, but right now, it’s pretty sandy and bleak. A number of succulents have taken root here, as well as some of the large grasses, which have developed large, thick leathery leaves with very sharp ends. They reproduce by sending up a single stalk with a cluster of simple flowers, and this stalk can take a couple years to grow. These large grasses are about waist high, but they look so much like the large Agave plants that will be seen in this area later! They haven’t developed the sap yet…I already tried making tequila from them…it didn’t work!
“There are a lot of things developing blossoms, but after Sarah did a species census in a few locations we’ve passed by, we noticed that the Monocotyledons seem to reign king! Simpler flowers, simpler leaf structure, and in drier areas, this seems to be a little more conservative of moisture and nutrient production. The spines at the tips of the leaves and the coarseness of the fibers make it harder for these plants to be eaten, too.
“The mammals that seem to be proliferating are also growing larger with each generation. Some are nearly the size of a small house cat! They remind me about the stories of the rats in New York sewers! For the most part they are scavengers, but I’ve noticed that their diet varies for region and habitat. Some are more herbivorous, and others actually have learned to forage on insects and other creatures. In some locations, we’ve even observed cannibalism! Even within the same regions, we’ve noticed that they formed loose knit colonies that varied their behaviour from one another. In the area we left west of Chixulub, we observed two colonies who’s territory coincided with one another…one group foraged on the ground, while the others took to the ever dense tree canopy. They may occupy the same surface region, but they never crossed paths directly.
“I came upon a frightening sight the other day! I came upon a big bird! He was damn near half my height, and he was so heavy he could barely fly! Some of these birds are getting huge! One thing that we have noticed with birds is their surprising AVOIDANCE of flight! Birds only fly when they need to, but in isolated environments of adequate food and lack of predation, they don’t. It takes a matter of a dozen or so generations for your average bird family to actually lose the ability to fly! Again, nature is amazing! So conserving. If it isn’t necessary, get rid of it! Flight is a very costly talent, as humans have learned so well. Caloric output through the air can be as much as three times that of traveling the same distance on the ground. Some birds manage to master the efficient art of gliding and using thermals and updrafts, but still it takes massive effort to get off the ground, and it presents great risks in the landing. It requires massive muscles that require energy just to maintain while sitting still, and it requires a delicate skeletal structure that is very prone to fatal injury. Birds are doing well in this period, and we know they will continue to prosper clear on to the Holocene, but we are already noticing that there are quite a few groups that chose not to fly. It only took a few thousand years for this differentiation to occur!
As they approached the area near what would later become Northern California, they were taken aback by a sight that was quite surprising. Three cone shaped volcanoes had sprouted from the rolling hills that gently sloped down to the sea. A half million years before, this area was virtually flat save for the gentle folds of land that were more reminiscent of Wisconsin or Michigan than the jagged mountains that would occupy the same region during the Holocene (modern days) but now, a series of stratocones dominated the skyline.
“I went on a field expedition to the Sutter Buttes when I was an undergraduate,” he said. “There was a formation, formed from a river delta, that had chunks of Rhyolite and Andesite in it. We always wondered where that came from. Conventional wisdom had placed the earliest of Cenozoic volcanism in the late Miocene. This is nearly thirty five million years earlier than we thought.”
She pointed to the large snow capped peak that dominated the landscape.
“That’s Mount Shasta, right?”
“You’re way too early for that one,” he said. “And a little too far south. That is about where the city of Susanville will be when California gets settled by our own kind.”
“So what’s causing it?”
“This part of North America is still along a subduction zone,” he said. “It’s older, so it’s not quite as active, but there might have been a last hurrah hiding deep underground. Other than that, the last volcanism was done here about twenty million years ago, and the next wave will come in another thirty, when we start overriding the mid Pacific ridge. I have a feeling we’re going to be doing a lot of rewriting the geological history…of EVERYWHERE!”
“January 20, 61, 553,221 B.C.E… It seems that there was a rash of volcanism world wide this first million years of the Cenozoic. We’ve observed volcanoes in Northern California, the future East Germany, Saharan Africa and even a lone and very nasty plug dome volcano just north of what later would become Memphis, not far from the future site of the town of Sykeston Missouri.
“Africa seems to still be joined at the hip with South America, and the Meditteranean is actually a vast ocean that stretches east, beyond the Holy Land, beyond the Himalaya, and back out to the Pacific. India and Saudi Arabia are attached together still. A row of islands has begun its slow grind into the southern stretches of North America, and other islands have appeared on the horizon. These areas too seem somewhat volcanically active.
“The volcanic activity in the north end of Africa is a series of northwest to southeast running fissures that spew fountains of basaltic lava along seams about ten miles long. The lava is rather fluid, like that on Hawaii or Iceland. It is a little higher in the silica content, so it’s more like a latite or andesite, but it has made quite a mark on the continent in an area about six hundred miles long. I am quite surprised we haven’t found evidence of it in our time. This little burst of volcanism may be the result of the pressure exerted on the mantle during the meteor impact.
“Mammals are making quite a comeback in both number and differentiation of species. There are a number of creatures nearly the size of German Shepherds, as well as varying sizes on down to mice and shrews. A number of them are strictly herbivorous, and there are a few cat sized animals that are almost strictly carnivores. They have begun assuming markings suitable for their environments. The herbivores in the more wooded areas have taken to markings similar to that on a newborn fawn deer, and the carnivores have begun taking on some interesting leopard like markings. In the more temperate areas, such as around my native Northern California, there is a cat sized insect eating creature that has dark fur, light skunks, and very pungent urine that it utilizes to keep other animals at bay. One of my favorite creatures is a little beast about the size of a Golden Retriever, an herbivore with dull claws and somewhat elongated head. It makes kind of a high pitched warble when it calls out in fear or for others of it’s kind. These little guys find some protection in numbers, and they look to the leadership of an alpha pair, male and female. There are a couple species I know that behave this way. Bos Taurus and Equus Caballus. We were likely observing the earlier creatures that would later become the Artiadactylans and Perissodactylia that would become horses and cows, among numerous other hoof footed creatures. Surprisingly, they are very curious about us, and there’s one who took to following me around. I named him Bocephus and kept him as a pet! He even crawls in my lap at night!
“It was quite an effort, as I had to fashion an oil pan, a front ball joint, and the synchromesh for the four wheel drive, each effort taking anywhere from a year and a half to six years find and fashion the materials, but we managed to take a explore all continents save for Australia (which has already detached itself far enough away that we can’t quite reach there with our current methods.) A low range of mountains is developing along the southern reaches of Europe and Asia, and the area along the eastern parts of South America south of where it is splitting from Africa is starting to lift upwards. The chunk of island arcs that has docked with North America appears to be of similar makeup to the rocks I observed on an Eco-Tour I took around Cuba on a bicycle when I was in college and still young and idealist. Could Cuba and the Greater Antilles come from the Pacific originally? We shall see!
“North America and Europe are getting quite a healthy stand of low growing pine like trees. We had noticed pines in the late Cretaceous, as they were similar to the Aucaryoxylon and Norfolk Island Star Pines, but these were somewhat similar to what we are more familiar with in the Holocene. Most are two needled species, two needles growing from a branch, sheathed at the base in a brown paper like covering. In different areas with different climates they vary in needle length, shape and shade. Trees in warmer areas have lighter colored needles and broad spread out branches, while those in cooler and damper areas are taller and more cone shaped. They are still capable of interbreeding, but how long that will last is up for grabs as they begin colonizing more far flung areas from one another.
We’re starting to see even more differentiation of birds. The more carnivorous birds spend their time atop the highest trees, while the smaller ones who make more of their diet of seeds and vegetation prefer the lower canopy and the underbrush. They are starting to find a rather interesting set of methods for locomotion, too. The larger birds have mastered the art of gliding more. Then there are a couple of rather large birds which stand almost as high as my waist, and they don’t fly much at all. They are so large they have a hard time getting off the ground. They are also large enough they don’t have too many enemies! They get their large beaks on anything they want, insects, live animals, dead meat, you name it! There’s quite a population of these animals on the South American continent.
At first we kind of missed the dinosaurs, but other creatures are filling the void left by their disappearance. In their place has come quite a selection of gentle, soft, and even tasty creatures…and I doubt if I could say any of those gigantic beasts were as fun to have trotting alongside as little Bocephus. It’s kind of interesting how fast these animals adapt. What we thought took several millions of years we’ve noticed happens much faster, sometimes within a few hundred generations! Whatever happens in the world, whether climate and weather patterns shift, fires wipe out a forest, the creatures seem to adapt. Evolution seems to happen at a rate that is exactly the speed of the need to.
“My God did it get cold fast!” said Dr. Johnson as he brought yet another armload of wood into the small cabin they built near the site of what would become the city of Berlin some fifty nine million years later.
“We’re going to have some problems,” said Sarah. “The mangos and date palms, there’s absolutely no fruit on them. Remember the freeze we had late last spring?”
“I’ve been noticing that every year,” he said. “We’ve been getting actual hard frosts later and later.”
“I could swear when I went south to the mountains, there was still some snow on the summits.”
“Those mountains can’t be that high,” he said.
“Only about five, maybe six thousand feet. If it keeps up like that, we’ll be looking at the formation of glaciers.”
“And let me guess, you’re wonderful ‘computer models’ you made in the back office of the museum said that we went into a warm period during the late Paleocene, right?”
“Yeah, and I was wrong, correct?”
“We might be going through a brief cycle,” he said. “We’ve seen this several times before. Usually it goes it’s course in about twenty or thirty years.”
“I’ve been keeping track of the numbers,” she said. “The change is a bit more extreme than any of the other times. I have a feeling we’re headed for some sort of interglacial episode.”
“An ice age,” he said. “We’re not among our buddies in academia right now. We’re likely headed for an ice age!”
“What did I miss in my models?”
“Lots of things. Mountain building, for one. There’s a ten thousand mile long range of mountains forming to our south. Then there’s the flow of water between the continents, allowing water to circulate and cool faster and not sit and stagnate like it has in the middle of North America. We also saw a couple volcanic eruptions that were real doozies! We don’t understand the whole thing!”
It had been some time since they had toured the world with little Bocephus trotting alongside. A couple million years before, the beloved pet had succumbed to old age and Johnson ceremoniously interred him into the ground near eastern Siberia. Fortunately, his legacy lived on for years, as Bocephus was quite a promiscuous beast. Some of those offspring followed along with them, and over the years, the progeny of these little beasts had also accompanied them. He had a habit of naming the pets after his favorite Country Western Music stars. Bocephus had a male offspring he named Randy, and as the generations continued, he had a Dolly, a Dottie West, George Strait, Brad Paisley, and numerous others. His current pet was a female Hyracotherium-like creature named for Reba McEntire, because of her rich red hair. She was about half again as large as Bocephus, and she had four toes on each foot, each one looking like a miniature blunted hoof.
“Well, then we can do one of two things. Either we can sit here and freeze to death, if we don’t starve first, or we can start wandering south. The fruit crop really sucks this year!”
“I’m still working on the engine block for the truck,” he said. “This area is really crappy for iron!”
“Think it’ll make it?”
“I found some copper and lead ores in an old faulted area about a hundred miles south of here. I might be able to patch the crack in the engine and hopefully that will get us a few hundred miles.”
“Once Reba gets done chewing on the leg on the table I so carefully put together, which makes me wonder why I ever do anything like that, I’d say we get packing! At the rate we’re going, it’s going to be cold, nasty and dangerous in about three weeks!”
“So where do you think is the best?”
“Southeast China,” she said. “Supposedly not much different to San Francisco climate wise. Unfortunately, that also is according to my wonderful model, so if you have any better ideas speak up now!”
“Southeast China it is!” he said. They loaded the aging vehicle and with engine knocking and rattling bad, they headed eastward past the long row of snowcapped mountains and into a heavy flurry.
Life on earth was about to face another challenge.
