The Urantia Book
PAPER 60
URANTIA DURING THE EARLY LAND-LIFE
ERA
Presented by a Life Carrier of Nebadon assigned to Satania and
now functioning on Urantia.
60:0.1 THE era of exclusive marine life has
ended. Land elevation, cooling crust and cooling oceans, sea
restriction and consequent deepening, together with a great
increase of land in northern latitudes, all conspired greatly to
change the world's climate in all regions far removed from the
equatorial zone.
60:0.2 The closing epochs of the preceding era
were indeed the age of frogs, but these ancestors of the land
vertebrates were no longer dominant, having survived in greatly
reduced numbers. Very few types outlived the rigorous trials of
the preceding period of biologic tribulation. Even the
spore-bearing plants were nearly extinct.
1. THE EARLY REPTILIAN AGE
60:1.1 The erosion deposits of this period
were mostly conglomerates, shale, and sandstone. The gypsum and
red layers throughout these sedimentations over both America and
Europe indicate that the climate of these continents was arid.
These arid districts were subjected to great erosion from the
violent and periodic cloudbursts on the surrounding highlands.
60:1.2 Few fossils are to be found in these
layers, but numerous sandstone footprints of the land reptiles
may be observed. In many regions the one thousand feet of red
sandstone deposit of this period contains no fossils. The life
of land animals was continuous only in certain parts of Africa.
60:1.3 These deposits vary in thickness from
3,000 to 10,000 feet, even being 18,000 on the Pacific coast.
Lava was later forced in between many of these layers. The
Palisades of the Hudson River were formed by the extrusion of
basalt lava between these Triassic strata. Volcanic action was
extensive in different parts of the world.
60:1.4 Over Europe, especially Germany and
Russia, may be found deposits of this period. In England the New
Red Sandstone belongs to this epoch. Limestone was laid down in
the southern Alps as the result of a sea invasion and may now be
seen as the peculiar dolomite limestone walls, peaks, and
pillars of those regions. This layer is to be found all over
Africa and Australia. The Carrara marble comes from such
modified limestone. Nothing of this period will be found in the
southern regions of South America as that part of the continent
remained down and hence presents only a water or marine deposit
continuous with the preceding and succeeding epochs.
60:1.5 150,000,000 years ago the early
land-life periods of the world's history began. Life, in
general, did not fare well but did better than at the strenuous
and hostile close of the marine-life era.
60:1.6 As this era opens, the eastern and
central parts of North America, the northern half of South
America, most of Europe, and all of Asia are well above water.
North America for the first time is geographically isolated, but
not for long as the Bering Strait land bridge soon again
emerges, connecting the continent with Asia.
60:1.7 Great troughs developed in North
America, paralleling the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The great
eastern-Connecticut fault appeared, one side eventually sinking
two miles. Many of these North American troughs were later
filled with erosion deposits, as also were many of the basins of
the fresh- and salt-water lakes of the mountain regions. Later
on, these filled land depressions were greatly elevated by lava
flows which occurred underground. The petrified forests of many
regions belong to this epoch.
60:1.8 The Pacific coast, usually above water
during the continental submergences, went down excepting the
southern part of California and a large island which then
existed in what is now the Pacific Ocean. This ancient
California sea was rich in marine life and extended eastward to
connect with the old sea basin of the midwestern region.
60:1.9 140,000,000 years ago,
suddenly and with only the hint of the two prereptilian
ancestors that developed in Africa during the preceding epoch,
the reptiles appeared in full-fledged form. They developed
rapidly, soon yielding crocodiles, scaled reptiles, and
eventually both sea serpents and flying reptiles. Their
transition ancestors speedily disappeared.
60:1.10 These rapidly evolving reptilian
dinosaurs soon became the monarchs of this age. They were egg
layers and are distinguished from all animals by their small
brains, having brains weighing less than one pound to control
bodies later weighing as much as forty tons. But earlier
reptiles were smaller, carnivorous, and walked kangaroolike on
their hind legs. They had hollow avian bones and subsequently
developed only three toes on their hind feet, and many of their
fossil footprints have been mistaken for those of giant birds.
Later on, the herbivorous dinosaurs evolved. They walked on all
fours, and one branch of this group developed a protective
armor.
60:1.11 Several million years later the first
mammals appeared. They were nonplacental and proved a speedy
failure; none survived. This was an experimental effort to
improve mammalian types, but it did not succeed on Urantia.
60:1.12 The marine life of this period was
meager but improved rapidly with the new invasion of the sea,
which again produced extensive coast lines of shallow waters.
Since there was more shallow water around Europe and Asia, the
richest fossil beds are to be found about these continents.
Today, if you would study the life of this age, examine the
Himalayan, Siberian, and Mediterranean regions, as well as India
and the islands of the southern Pacific basin. A prominent
feature of the marine life was the presence of hosts of the
beautiful ammonites, whose fossil remains are found all over the
world.
60:1.13 130,000,000 years ago the seas
had changed very little. Siberia and North America were
connected by the Bering Strait land bridge. A rich and unique
marine life appeared on the Californian Pacific coast, where
over one thousand species of ammonites developed from the higher
types of cephalopods. The life changes of this period were
indeed revolutionary notwithstanding that they were transitional
and gradual.
60:1.14 This period extended over twenty-five
million years and is known as the Triassic.
2. THE LATER REPTILIAN AGE
60:2.1 120,000,000 years ago a new
phase of the reptilian age began. The great event of this period
was the evolution and decline of the dinosaurs. Land-animal life
reached its greatest development, in point of size, and had
virtually perished from the face of the earth by the end of this
age. The dinosaurs evolved in all sizes from a species less than
two feet long up to the huge noncarnivorous dinosaurs,
seventy-five feet long, that have never since been equaled in
bulk by any living creature.
60:2.2 The largest of the dinosaurs originated
in western North America. These monstrous reptiles are buried
throughout the Rocky Mountain regions, along the whole of the
Atlantic coast of North America, over western Europe, South
Africa, and India, but not in Australia.
60:2.3 These massive creatures became less
active and strong as they grew larger and larger; but they
required such an enormous amount of food and the land was so
overrun by them that they literally starved to death and became
extinct -- they lacked the intelligence to cope with the
situation.
60:2.4 By this time most of the eastern part
of North America, which had long been elevated, had been leveled
down and washed into the Atlantic Ocean so that the coast
extended several hundred miles farther out than now. The western
part of the continent was still up, but even these regions were
later invaded by both the northern sea and the Pacific, which
extended eastward to the Dakota Black Hills region.
60:2.5 This was a fresh-water age
characterized by many inland lakes, as is shown by the abundant
fresh-water fossils of the so-called Morrison beds of Colorado,
Montana, and Wyoming. The thickness of these combined salt- and
fresh-water deposits varies from 2,000 to 5,000 feet; but very
little limestone is present in these layers.
60:2.6 The same polar sea that extended so far
down over North America likewise covered all of South America
except the soon appearing Andes Mountains. Most of China and
Russia was inundated, but the water invasion was greatest in
Europe. It was during this submergence that the beautiful
lithographic stone of southern Germany was laid down, those
strata in which fossils, such as the most delicate wings of
olden insects, are preserved as of but yesterday.
60:2.7 The flora of this age was much like
that of the preceding. Ferns persisted, while conifers and pines
became more and more like the present-day varieties. Some coal
was still being formed along the northern Mediterranean shores.
60:2.8 The return of the seas improved the
weather. Corals spread to European waters, testifying that the
climate was still mild and even, but they never again appeared
in the slowly cooling polar seas. The marine life of these times
improved and developed greatly, especially in European waters.
Both corals and crinoids temporarily appeared in larger numbers
than heretofore, but the ammonites dominated the invertebrate
life of the oceans, their average size ranging from three to
four inches, though one species attained a diameter of eight
feet. Sponges were everywhere, and both cuttlefish and oysters
continued to evolve.
60:2.9 110,000,000 years ago the
potentials of marine life were continuing to unfold. The sea
urchin was one of the outstanding mutations of this epoch.
Crabs, lobsters, and the modern types of crustaceans matured.
Marked changes occurred in the fish family, a sturgeon type
first appearing, but the ferocious sea serpents, descended from
the land reptiles, still infested all the seas, and they
threatened the destruction of the entire fish family.
60:2.10 This continued to be, pre-eminently,
the age of the dinosaurs. They so overran the land that two
species had taken to the water for sustenance during the
preceding period of sea encroachment. These sea serpents
represent a backward step in evolution. While some new species
are progressing, certain strains remain stationary and others
gravitate backward, reverting to a former state. And this is
what happened when these two types of reptiles forsook the land.
60:2.11 As time passed, the sea serpents grew
to such size that they became very sluggish and eventually
perished because they did not have brains large enough to afford
protection for their immense bodies. Their brains weighed less
than two ounces notwithstanding the fact that these huge
ichthyosaurs sometimes grew to be fifty feet long, the majority
being over thirty-five feet in length. The marine crocodilians
were also a reversion from the land type of reptile, but unlike
the sea serpents, these animals always returned to the land to
lay their eggs.
60:2.12 Soon after two species of dinosaurs
migrated to the water in a futile attempt at self-preservation,
two other types were driven to the air by the bitter competition
of life on land. But these flying pterosaurs were not the
ancestors of the true birds of subsequent ages. They evolved
from the hollow-boned leaping dinosaurs, and their wings were of
batlike formation with a spread of twenty to twenty-five feet.
These ancient flying reptiles grew to be ten feet long, and they
had separable jaws much like those of modern snakes. For a time
these flying reptiles appeared to be a success, but they failed
to evolve along lines which would enable them to survive as air
navigators. They represent the nonsurviving strains of bird
ancestry.
60:2.13 Turtles increased during this period,
first appearing in North America. Their ancestors came over from
Asia by way of the northern land bridge.
60:2.14 One hundred million years ago the
reptilian age was drawing to a close. The dinosaurs, for all
their enormous mass, were all but brainless animals, lacking the
intelligence to provide sufficient food to nourish such enormous
bodies. And so did these sluggish land reptiles perish in
ever-increasing numbers. Henceforth, evolution will follow the
growth of brains, not physical bulk, and the development of
brains will characterize each succeeding epoch of animal
evolution and planetary progress.
60:2.15 This period, embracing the height and
the beginning decline of the reptiles, extended nearly
twenty-five million years and is known as the Jurassic.
3. THE CRETACEOUS STAGE
THE FLOWERING-PLANT PERIOD
THE AGE OF BIRDS
60:3.1 The great Cretaceous period derives its
name from the predominance of the prolific chalk-making
foraminifers in the seas. This period brings Urantia to near the
end of the long reptilian dominance and witnesses the appearance
of flowering plants and bird life on land. These are also the
times of the termination of the westward and southward drift of
the continents, accompanied by tremendous crustal deformations
and concomitant widespread lava flows and great volcanic
activities.
60:3.2 Near the close of the preceding
geologic period much of the continental land was up above water,
although as yet there were no mountain peaks. But as the
continental land drift continued, it met with the first great
obstruction on the deep floor of the Pacific. This contention of
geologic forces gave impetus to the formation of the whole vast
north and south mountain range extending from Alaska down
through Mexico to Cape Horn.
60:3.3 This period thus becomes the modern
mountain-building stage of geologic history. Prior to this
time there were few mountain peaks, merely elevated land ridges
of great width. Now the Pacific coast range was beginning to
elevate, but it was located seven hundred miles west of the
present shore line. The Sierras were beginning to form, their
gold-bearing quartz strata being the product of lava flows of
this epoch. In the eastern part of North America, Atlantic sea
pressure was also working to cause land elevation.
60:3.4 100,000,000 years ago the North
American continent and a part of Europe were well above water.
The warping of the American continents continued, resulting in
the metamorphosing of the South American Andes and in the
gradual elevation of the western plains of North America. Most
of Mexico sank beneath the sea, and the southern Atlantic
encroached on the eastern coast of South America, eventually
reaching the present shore line. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans
were then about as they are today.
60:3.5 95,000,000 years ago the
American and European land masses again began to sink. The
southern seas commenced the invasion of North America and
gradually extended northward to connect with the Arctic Ocean,
constituting the second greatest submergence of the continent.
When this sea finally withdrew, it left the continent about as
it now is. Before this great submergence began, the eastern
Appalachian highlands had been almost completely worn down to
the water's level. The many colored layers of pure clay now used
for the manufacture of earthenware were laid down over the
Atlantic coast regions during this age, their average thickness
being about 2,000 feet.
60:3.6 Great volcanic actions occurred south
of the Alps and along the line of the present California
coast-range mountains. The greatest crustal deformations in
millions upon millions of years took place in Mexico. Great
changes also occurred in Europe, Russia, Japan, and southern
South America. The climate became increasingly diversified.
60:3.7 90,000,000 years ago the
angiosperms emerged from these early Cretaceous seas and soon
overran the continents. These land plants suddenly
appeared along with fig trees, magnolias, and tulip trees. Soon
after this time fig trees, breadfruit trees, and palms
overspread Europe and the western plains of North America. No
new land animals appeared.
60:3.8 85,000,000 years ago Bering
Strait closed, shutting off the cooling waters of the northern
seas. Theretofore the marine life of the Atlantic-Gulf waters
and that of the Pacific Ocean had differed greatly, owing to the
temperature variations of these two bodies of water, which now
became uniform.
60:3.9 The deposits of chalk and greensand
marl give name to this period. The sedimentations of these times
are variegated, consisting of chalk, shale, sandstone, and small
amounts of limestone, together with inferior coal or lignite,
and in many regions they contain oil. These layers vary in
thickness from 200 feet in some places to 10,000 feet in western
North America and numerous European localities. Along the
eastern borders of the Rocky Mountains these deposits may be
observed in the uptilted foothills.
60:3.10 All over the world these strata are
permeated with chalk, and these layers of porous semirock pick
up water at upturned outcrops and convey it downward to furnish
the water supply of much of the earth's present arid regions.
60:3.11 80,000,000 years ago great
disturbances occurred in the earth's crust. The western advance
of the continental drift was coming to a standstill, and the
enormous energy of the sluggish momentum of the hinter
continental mass upcrumpled the Pacific shore line of both North
and South America and initiated profound repercussional changes
along the Pacific shores of Asia. This circumpacific land
elevation, which culminated in present-day mountain ranges, is
more than twenty-five thousand miles long. And the upheavals
attendant upon its birth were the greatest surface distortions
to take place since life appeared on Urantia. The lava flows,
both above and below ground, were extensive and widespread.
60:3.12 75,000,000 years ago marks the
end of the continental drift. From Alaska to Cape Horn the long
Pacific coast mountain ranges were completed, but there were as
yet few peaks.
60:3.13 The backthrust of the halted
continental drift continued the elevation of the western plains
of North America, while in the east the worn-down Appalachian
Mountains of the Atlantic coast region were projected straight
up, with little or no tilting.
60:3.14 70,000,000 years ago the
crustal distortions connected with the maximum elevation of the
Rocky Mountain region took place. A large segment of rock was
overthrust fifteen miles at the surface in British Columbia;
here the Cambrian rocks are obliquely thrust out over the
Cretaceous layers. On the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains,
near the Canadian border, there was another spectacular
overthrust; here may be found the prelife stone layers shoved
out over the then recent Cretaceous deposits.
60:3.15 This was an age of volcanic activity
all over the world, giving rise to numerous small isolated
volcanic cones. Submarine volcanoes broke out in the submerged
Himalayan region. Much of the rest of Asia, including Siberia,
was also still under water.
60:3.16 65,000,000 years ago there
occurred one of the greatest lava flows of all time. The
deposition layers of these and preceding lava flows are to be
found all over the Americas, North and South Africa, Australia,
and parts of Europe.
60:3.17 The land animals were little changed,
but because of greater continental emergence, especially in
North America, they rapidly multiplied. North America was the
great field of the land-animal evolution of these times, most of
Europe being under water.
60:3.18 The climate was still warm and
uniform. The arctic regions were enjoying weather much like that
of the present climate in central and southern North America.
60:3.19 Great plant-life evolution was taking
place. Among the land plants the angiosperms predominated, and
many present-day trees first appeared, including beech, birch,
oak, walnut, sycamore, maple, and modern palms. Fruits, grasses,
and cereals were abundant, and these seed-bearing grasses and
trees were to the plant world what the ancestors of man were to
the animal world -- they were second in evolutionary importance
only to the appearance of man himself. Suddenly and
without previous gradation, the great family of flowering plants
mutated. And this new flora soon overspread the entire world.
60:3.20 60,000,000 years ago, though
the land reptiles were on the decline, the dinosaurs continued
as monarchs of the land, the lead now being taken by the more
agile and active types of the smaller leaping kangaroo varieties
of the carnivorous dinosaurs. But some time previously there had
appeared new types of the herbivorous dinosaurs, whose rapid
increase was due to the appearance of the grass family of land
plants. One of these new grass-eating dinosaurs was a true
quadruped having two horns and a capelike shoulder flange. The
land type of turtle, twenty feet across, appeared as did also
the modern crocodile and true snakes of the modern type. Great
changes were also occurring among the fishes and other forms of
marine life.
60:3.21 The wading and swimming prebirds of
earlier ages had not been a success in the air, nor had the
flying dinosaurs. They were a short-lived species, soon becoming
extinct. They, too, were subject to the dinosaur doom,
destruction, because of having too little brain substance in
comparison with body size. This second attempt to produce
animals that could navigate the atmosphere failed, as did the
abortive attempt to produce mammals during this and a preceding
age.
60:3.22 55,000,000 years ago the
evolutionary march was marked by the sudden appearance of
the first of the true birds, a small pigeonlike creature
which was the ancestor of all bird life. This was the third type
of flying creature to appear on earth, and it sprang directly
from the reptilian group, not from the contemporary flying
dinosaurs nor from the earlier types of toothed land birds. And
so this becomes known as the age of birds as well as the
declining age of reptiles.
4. THE END OF THE CHALK PERIOD
60:4.1 The great Cretaceous period was drawing
to a close, and its termination marks the end of the great sea
invasions of the continents. Particularly is this true of North
America, where there had been just twenty-four great
inundations. And though there were subsequent minor
submergences, none of these can be compared with the extensive
and lengthy marine invasions of this and previous ages. These
alternate periods of land and sea dominance have occurred in
million-year cycles. There has been an agelong rhythm associated
with this rise and fall of ocean floor and continental land
levels. And these same rhythmical crustal movements will
continue from this time on throughout the earth's history but
with diminishing frequency and extent.
60:4.2 This period also witnesses the end of
the continental drift and the building of the modern mountains
of Urantia. But the pressure of the continental masses and the
thwarted momentum of their agelong drift are not the exclusive
influences in mountain building. The chief and underlying factor
in determining the location of a mountain range is the
pre-existent lowland, or trough, which has become filled up with
the comparatively lighter deposits of the land erosion and
marine drifts of the preceding ages. These lighter areas of land
are sometimes 15,000 to 20,000 feet thick; therefore, when the
crust is subjected to pressure from any cause, these lighter
areas are the first to crumple up, fold, and rise upward to
afford compensatory adjustment for the contending and
conflicting forces and pressures at work in the earth's crust or
underneath the crust. Sometimes these upthrusts of land occur
without folding. But in connection with the rise of the Rocky
Mountains, great folding and tilting occurred, coupled with
enormous overthrusts of the various layers, both underground and
at the surface.
60:4.3 The oldest mountains of the world are
located in Asia, Greenland, and northern Europe among those of
the older east-west systems. The mid-age mountains are in the
circumpacific group and in the second European east-west system,
which was born at about the same time. This gigantic uprising is
almost ten thousand miles long, extending from Europe over into
the West Indies land elevations. The youngest mountains are in
the Rocky Mountain system, where, for ages, land elevations had
occurred only to be successively covered by the sea, though some
of the higher lands remained as islands. Subsequent to the
formation of the mid-age mountains, a real mountain highland was
elevated which was destined, subsequently, to be carved into the
present Rocky Mountains by the combined artistry of nature's
elements.
60:4.4 The present North American Rocky
Mountain region is not the original elevation of land; that
elevation had been long since leveled by erosion and then
re-elevated. The present front range of mountains is what is
left of the remains of the original range which was re-elevated.
Pikes Peak and Longs Peak are outstanding examples of this
mountain activity, extending over two or more generations of
mountain lives. These two peaks held their heads above water
during several of the preceding inundations.
60:4.5 Biologically as well as geologically
this was an eventful and active age on land and under water. Sea
urchins increased while corals and crinoids decreased. The
ammonites, of preponderant influence during a previous age, also
rapidly declined. On land the fern forests were largely replaced
by pine and other modern trees, including the gigantic redwoods.
By the end of this period, while the placental mammal has not
yet evolved, the biologic stage is fully set for the appearance,
in a subsequent age, of the early ancestors of the future
mammalian types.
60:4.6 And thus ends a long era of world
evolution, extending from the early appearance of land life down
to the more recent times of the immediate ancestors of the human
species and its collateral branches. This, the Cretaceous age,
covers fifty million years and brings to a close the
premammalian era of land life, which extends over a period of
one hundred million years and is known as the Mesozoic.
60:4.7
Presented by a Life Carrier of Nebadon assigned to Satania and
now functioning on Urantia.
