Paleontology of the Anthropologist. Volume 2. Mesozoic

Mesozoic — it is a triumph, it is greatness! The second part of the trilogy "Paleontology of the Anthropologist" by the well-known Russian popularizer of science Stanislav Drobyshevsky illustrates the picture of our Earth in the Mesozoic era. For most... of the Mesozoic, development proceeded like in slow motion. During this period, flowering plants and butterflies, turtles and snakes, birds and mammals appeared. Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and other "saurians" disappeared. One might ask, why do we need to know about them if they left no descendants? If such magnificent creatures, having ruled the planet for many epochs, failed, how could we possibly succeed? But no! The existence of ammonites, plesiosaurs, and all the other strange beings of the past was not in vain. In their daily lives, they influenced ecosystems, changed the world they inhabited, causing our ancestors to evolve as well. Without them, there would be no guarantees that one of the species, sixty-three million years later, would take a stone in each hand and begin a new era in the history of the planet, and possibly — the entire Galaxy.