# A Brief Trip Through Deep Time - Non-Fiction with a Twist



## Cran (May 29, 2014)

> A few years ago, Ian McNamara, a curator of the Western  Australian museum of natural history and my palaeontology professor, had  set a challenge: to write a travel brochure covering four specific  times in geological history and to have fun with it - "something like  the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy".




(*With apologies to Douglas Adams)*

*The Half-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation *
(Temporal Lob Division)[1]
in conjunction with
*Phanerozoic Time-Life Productions*
and the 
*Mostly Harmless Tourist Bureau*
are pleased to offer
*The holiday of several million lifetimes!*
A 4 day, 3 night guided tour to prehistory.​ 



*See ..... *
familiar locations in strange places filled with weird exotic creatures!

*Hear .......*
the calls of triumph of ravenously hungry newly evolved species![2]

*Feel ......*
the Earth move...everywhere!

*Learn about ...... *
some of the Earth’s most famous orogenous zones![3]

and why dinosaurs didn’t wear digital watches!



*Our first stop on this exciting adventure through time is...*


[1]  designers of The Big Bang Burger Bar, and of course, Milliways - the  Restaurant at the End of the Universe (for further information, read _the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams)

[2] in harmonic counterpoint to the horrified cries of their surprised parents

[3] Not Recommended for Children


____________________________________________________________

*440 Million Years BP![1]*

*It is...*
*The Early Silurian*[2]​ 
*See....*
.....the Earth’s most pristine wilderness since the Late Proterozoic where the only footprints you’ll find are your own![3]
.....that three quarters of the land is Antarctica, without the penguins! 
.....the rest are desert islands, with real deserts!
.....strange coloured smears on coastal rocks and mud flats; algae and  mosses representing the highest forms of life on land; and minute specks  of dust which someone will tell you are spores!

*Hear....*
.....nothing but the sound of ice cracking, and water flowing as the massive southern glaciers melt!

*Feel....*
.....cold![4]
.....the urgent desperation of a lonely trilobite as it searches the rising seas for a mate, or for something to eat![5]

*Learn about....*
.....the aftermath of one of the Earth’s greatest mass extinctions where over 90% of life was wiped out[6] 
.....the most exciting thing happening at this time is in the middle of the oceans and about 1500 metres below the surface[7]

*Gasp.....*
.....for breath in the oxygen poor atmosphere where walking on a beach feels like climbing Mt Everest!
.....in horror as a poor graptolite is plucked from its comfortable anoxic seafloor and washed ashore in a king tide

*Wonder....*
.....why we didn’t visit the Late Silurian instead[8]

*After the only bug-free night under the biggest full moon you ever saw, we’ll move on to...*


[1]  BP means ‘Before Present time’ - it is not a cynical product placement  for exploiters of fossil fuels; they’re not interested in this period  anyway - they are waiting for the Carboniferous

[2] As in ‘the early Silurian catches the cold’

[3] assuming you are one of the universe’s life forms which have feet, and use them for walking

[4] it is recommended that your towel be extra fluffy

[5] After the Late Ordovician glut of parties and fresh food, easy meals and easy mates are a little hard to come by

[6] and the recovery, which takes up to 10 million years, hasn’t happened yet

[7]  where the earliest known hydrothermal vent communities, who couldn’t  care less about land values or oxygen, are busily excreting their  by-products on the pillow basalts; the by-products are metallic  deposits, and by processing them, homo sapiens can push little pieces of  plastic around and wear all the digital watches they want 

[8]  when the Earth had warmed, and the continents were moving, and the  graptolites had radiated into new forms, and one of the surviving  jawless fish did something unnatural and produced the Earth’s first  jawed fish, and the Earth’s first wildfire burned in what passed for  late Silurian heathland, and when we could have stopped off at the  Stonehaven Silurian Cafe for a deep-fried Mars Bar and complained to the  management about the invasion of the millipedes 

_______________________________________________________________


*340 Million Years BP![1]*

*It is....*
*The Early Carboniferous*[2]​ 
*See....*
.....the sea, almost everywhere![3]
.....the Old Red Sandstone Continent, protected from the sea by the Antler, Acadian-Caledonian, and Ural Mountains[4]
.....the extensive, low-lying, multi-coloured swamp forests[5]

*Hear....*
.....the roar of the surf as it relentlessly pounds and shapes the most extensive limestone shallows of all time
.....your children’s cries of delight filling the steamy swamp forest as  they chase and torment harmless eurypterids the size of cattle dogs[6] 

*Feel....*
.....wet![7]
.....warm and wet!
.....warm, wet, wriggling things crawling about everywhere!

*Learn about....*
.....when ‘eye of newt’ was a meal that could feed a family of four!
.....when a newt was giving you ‘the eye’, it was sizing you up for a meal[8]
.....why the Carboniferous swamp forests were declared a ‘no smoking  zone’ and why it’s dangerous to ‘light up’ in an atmosphere that is 35%  oxygen[9]

*Gasp.....*
.....for breath in the warm steamy air, as you endlessly tread water about 2 metres above vast fields of wave-battered crinoids
.....for a fag as you weigh up whether one puff is worth the risk of ending up like the rest of the charcoal deposits 

*Wonder....*
*if the next stop might be just a little drier*


[1] No, it is still not a product placement, despite what I told you yesterday

[2] But it could have been ‘The Carbonate-erous’

[3]  except in the south, where remnants of the Gondwanan glaciers are  carving their initials in the flanks of the baby Andes (aka the Samfrau  Mountains)

[4]  calling to mind ‘the Old Red Guard’, these orogenous zones should not  be viewed by impressionable children; that’s what the scorpion-filled  swamps are for!

[5]  well, they might have been multi-coloured (red, white, purple, yellow,  variegated, etc), until modelti henryfordii decided that plants could be  any colour they want as long as it’s green!

[6] and their screams of terror when they realise they’ve mistaken a harmless eurypterid for a scorpion on steroids!

[7] extra-absorbent towels are recommended

[8] to feed its family of 400!

[9]  oh, what the hell, ‘light ‘em if you got ‘em’; the 30m high  lignin-reinforced woody plants burst into flame regularly anyway, and  your charred remains won’t look all that different to theirs



_________________________________________________________________

*240 Million Years BP![1]*

*It is....*
*The Mid Triassic*[2]​ 
*See....*
.....that the whole world is Australia, without the marsupials, so we’ll call it Pangaea[3]
.....that our great(times ‘_n_’)[4]-  grandmother really does look and act for all the world like the result  of an unnatural pairing between a rabid pit bull terrier and a psychotic  Tasmanian devil![5]
.....that some reptiles had had enough, decided to buck the trend, and went back into the sea
.....that, after yet another mass extinction, the ammonites gave up their religious and moral beliefs and became fashion slaves[6]

*Hear....*
.....the ‘brawp’ of the first frog[7]
.....that the tourist ‘hotspot’ of the age must be the Tethyan  Embayment; a tropical paradise where the wealthy can scuba dive among  the first modern corals, escape the sun beneath lush ferns and cycads,  refreshed by seasonal monsoons, eat freshly caught fish, and improve  their love-lives with essence of ginko rubbed into their tanned limbs by  highly paid professional staff[8]

*Feel....*
.....hot and dry![9]

*Learn about....*
.....how the last glossopteris died of shock and embarrassment[10]
.....how without the emergence of the world’s first nudists (see footnote 10 ref’d above), Christmas just wouldn’t be the same[11] 

*Gasp.....*
.....for breath in the hot dry air that has an even lower oxygen ratio than the Early Silurian![12]

*Wonder....*
.....why the words of the first verse of ‘I love a sunburnt country...’ seem to echo endlessly in the back of your mind
.....why your guide called the far northern marine deposits something like ‘Boreal silly cyclastic sediments’[13]

*.....where are all the dinosaurs then?*

[1] I won’t tell you again!

[2] but only because the Early Triassic got the short end of the deal - 6 million years, that’s rough!

[3] or more like elevated Mongolia in summer, without the yaks and yurts; you wanted drier....you got it! 

[4] where ‘_n_’ is a really, really, really big number!

[5] but to avoid embarrassment and libel suits, we’ll call her a cynodont

[6] with a new look and new wardrobe every season!

[7] followed by the ‘gulp’ of the first frog-eater; possibly the archosaur chirotherium

[8] while budget tourists like yourself are stuck in the middle of a dry salt bed, staring at the powdered residue of fungi!

[9] you can fashion your towel into a simple turban or headscarf

[10] when it encountered the world’s first nudists - gymnosperms with exposed seeds!

[11] those exhibitionist gymnosperms were also the first modern conifers

[12] at around 10% oxygen, you might not be able to ‘flick your bic’ at all!

[13] the final resting place for Edsels and other silicas



__________________________________________________________________

*140 Million Years BP![1]*

*It is....*
*The Early Cretaceous*[2]​ 
*See....*
.....the pretty dragonfly resting on the earliest pre-floral flowering  plant, which just escapes being eaten by a migrating hadrosaur[3] 
.....that the tide, which was way out in the Mid Triassic, had come in with a vengeance, and then suddenly left again![4]
.....that your watch is acting funny[5]

*Feel....*
.....all warm and fuzzy as you watch the small ornithischian dinosaur  Psittacosaurus care for and protect 34 juveniles all huddled within half  a square metre, and then....
.....afraid....feel very afraid![6]

*Learn about....*
.....Rule 1: Do not feed the animals[7]
.....how Africa and South America got divorced[8]
.....how India and Australia are considering separation
.....how compressed coccoliths and compressed curds are as different as chalk and cheese[9]

*Gasp.....*
.....in awe at the most amazing auroral displays in the evening skies[10]
.....in terror as you stare into the gaping, slavering maw of a neovenator, and fear that you are about to break Rule 1![11]


*Wonder....*
.....about that creature in that monkey-puzzle tree; is it a bird? A pterosaur? A dinosaur with plumage? Or a feathered reptile?[12]



[1] ......

[2] but the Late Mesozoic

[3] because they all get buried by a sudden ash flow 

[4] because we have visited the only time in the whole Cretaceous when sea levels are very low

[5]  but your compass works a treat! The Earth’s magnetic field at this time  is much stronger than in the Holocene; this is why dinosaurs never  bothered with digital watches

[6]  when you remember that you and your ancestors are much lower on the  food chain in the Early Cretaceous, and that the ornithicsian now has 34  more hungry mouths to feed!

[7] it would upset the palaeontologists to find your bones inside those of T-Rex! 

[8] after they decided to go their own ways and separated, saying they wouldn’t be happy until there was an ocean between them

[9] and why compressed curds could never result in the White Cliffs of Dover

[10] thanks to the stronger magnetic field and an active sun

[11] while not quite the dimensions of a T-Rex, this theropod would still consider you an easy meal

[12]  it could be a microraptor gui, a sinovenator changii (contemporaneous  feathered theropods), an archaeopteryx (a bird with teeth), an  ornithodesmus (a pterosaur), or less likely, a Longisquama insignis  (described as the earliest feathered reptile and ‘clearly not a  dinosaur’) which first showed up in the Triassic (but not when we were  visiting)   





_________________________________________________________________

*Who To Thank When You Survive It All*


*Your lucky stars...*​ 

But also:

Cassell’s Atlas of Evolution
McNamara and Long (The Evolution Revolution)
David Attenborough’s Life On Earth
Michael Dempsey and David Larkin (The Ages of the Earth - Foundations of Science)
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dunbar’s Historical Geology
Science@Nature.com
ScienceDaily.com
BBC.com/science
AAAS.com (American Association of Academies of Science)
ABC.com.au/science
and 

*all of the intrepid explorers who made understanding fossils *
*their way of life*

___________________________________________________________________


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## Kepharel (May 29, 2014)

Brilliant


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## Cran (May 30, 2014)

Thank you, Kepharel. I was reminded of it recently when reading a discussion about "creative non-fiction"; I thought I'd share an example.


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## apple (May 30, 2014)

And what an example it is!  I was fascinated. Your research, wow.  I love the humor you inserted (so funny) that in reality, helps us move  through our ever changing, scary world .  Cran, you ARE brilliant.  What a mind.  I enjoyed this so much. I think the bar is set too high here with your sample of "creative non-fiction."  More Please.


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## qwertyportne (May 30, 2014)

Cran, that was more fun than I've had in eons! Thank you.


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## Cran (May 30, 2014)

apple said:


> And what an example it is!  I was fascinated. Your research, wow.  I love the humor you inserted (so funny) that in reality, helps us move  through our ever changing, scary world .  Cran, you ARE brilliant.  What a mind.  I enjoyed this so much. I think the bar is set too high here with your sample of "creative non-fiction."  More Please.





qwertyportne said:


> Cran, that was more fun than I've had in eons! Thank you.


OK - now I'm blushing. Thank you both.

I have to admit that I've always loved research writing; my time as a general then niche journalist made me aware of it, and university honed the skills I needed to pursue it further. But this one was pure fun, and a rare opportunity to apply my sense of humour to science. Yes, I would like to do more - time is the key because my multi-tasking abilities (such as they are) are already overwhelmed.


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## Gumby (May 30, 2014)

Cran said:


> I have to admit that I've always loved research writing;



And it shows. 



Cran said:


> I would like to do more - time is the key because my  multi-tasking abilities (such as they are) are already  overwhelmed.



Could have fooled me.


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## Ethan (Jun 5, 2014)

What a prelude to a sci-fi story, you really MUST expand on this!, there is so much research already the story/stories are just begging to be told, no more procrastination....get to it !


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## InstituteMan (Jun 5, 2014)

I fear that this is one of those works with that combination of high quality and delightfully esoteric subject matter that makes it hard to comment. I don't really know what to say other than "wow, this is good!" I have been meaning to come up with something more insightful for days, but that is all I've got!


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