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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 60
URANTIA DURING THE EARLY LAND-LIFE ERA
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.
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