Urantia During the Early Land-Life Era

60:1.1The 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.

60:1.2Few 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.

60:1.3These 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.

60:1.4Over 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.

60:1.5150,000,000 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.

60:1.6As 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.

60:1.7Great 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.

60:1.8The 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.

60:1.9140,000,000 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.

60:1.10These 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.

60:1.11Sev­eral 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.

60:1.12The 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.

60:1.13130,000,000 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.

60:1.14This pe­riod ex­tended over twenty-five mil­lion years and is known as the Tri­as­sic.