Paleontology of the Anthropologist. Volume 2. Mesozoic

Mesozoic — it is a triumph, it is grandeur! The second part of the trilogy «Paleontology of the Anthropologist» by the well-known Russian science popularizer Stanislav Drobyshevsky illustrates the picture of our Earth during the Mesozoic era. For most of the Mesozoic, development proceeded as if in slow motion. During this period, flowering plants and butterflies, turtles and snakes, birds and mammals appeared. Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and other «saurs» disappeared. One might wonder why we should know about them if they left no descendants? If such magnificent creatures, which ruled the planet for many eras, could not make it, how could we possibly endure? 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, and made our ancestors evolve. Without them, there would be no guarantees that one of the species, sixty-three million years later, would pick up a stone in each hand and begin a new epoch in the history of the planet, and perhaps even of the entire Galaxy.