The Mammalian Era on Urantia

61:3.1Land el­e­va­tion and sea seg­re­ga­tion were slowly chang­ing the world’s weather, grad­u­ally cool­ing it, but the cli­mate was still mild. Se­quoias and mag­no­lias grew in Green­land, but the sub­trop­i­cal plants were be­gin­ning to mi­grate south­ward. By the end of this pe­riod these warm-cli­mate plants and trees had largely dis­ap­peared from the north­ern lat­i­tudes, their places be­ing taken by more hardy plants and the de­cid­u­ous trees.

61:3.2There was a great in­crease in the va­ri­eties of grasses, and the teeth of many mam­malian species grad­u­ally al­tered to con­form to the pres­ent-day graz­ing type.

61:3.325,000,000 years ago there was a slight land sub­mer­gence fol­low­ing the long epoch of land el­e­va­tion. The Rocky Moun­tain re­gion re­mained highly el­e­vated so that the de­po­si­tion of ero­sion ma­te­rial con­tin­ued through­out the low­lands to the east. The Sier­ras were well re-el­e­vated; in fact, they have been ris­ing ever since. The great four-mile ver­ti­cal fault in the Cal­i­for­nia re­gion dates from this time.

61:3.420,000,000 years ago was in­deed the golden age of mam­mals. The Bering Strait land bridge was up, and many groups of an­i­mals mi­grated to North Amer­ica from Asia, in­clud­ing the four-tusked mastodons, short-legged rhinoceroses, and many va­ri­eties of the cat fam­ily.

61:3.5The first deer ap­peared, and North Amer­ica was soon over­run by ru­mi­nants—deer, oxen, camels, bi­son, and sev­eral species of rhinoceroses—but the gi­ant pigs, more than six feet tall, be­came ex­tinct.

61:3.6The huge ele­phants of this and sub­se­quent pe­ri­ods pos­sessed large brains as well as large bod­ies, and they soon over­ran the en­tire world ex­cept Aus­tralia. For once the world was dom­i­nated by a huge an­i­mal with a brain suf­fi­ciently large to en­able it to carry on. Con­fronted by the highly in­tel­li­gent life of these ages, no an­i­mal the size of an ele­phant could have sur­vived un­less it had pos­sessed a brain of large size and su­pe­rior qual­ity. In in­tel­li­gence and adap­ta­tion the ele­phant is ap­proached only by the horse and is sur­passed only by man him­self. Even so, of the fifty species of ele­phants in ex­is­tence at the open­ing of this pe­riod, only two have sur­vived.

61:3.715,000,000 years ago the moun­tain re­gions of Eura­sia were ris­ing, and there was some vol­canic ac­tiv­ity through­out these re­gions, but noth­ing com­pa­ra­ble to the lava flows of the West­ern Hemi­sphere. These un­set­tled con­di­tions pre­vailed all over the world.

61:3.8The Strait of Gibral­tar closed, and Spain was con­nected with Africa by the old land bridge, but the Med­i­ter­ra­nean flowed into the At­lantic through a nar­row chan­nel which ex­tended across France, the moun­tain peaks and high­lands ap­pear­ing as is­lands above this an­cient sea. Later on, these Eu­ro­pean seas be­gan to with­draw. Still later, the Med­i­ter­ra­nean was con­nected with the In­dian Ocean, while at the close of this pe­riod the Suez re­gion was el­e­vated so that the Med­i­ter­ra­nean be­came, for a time, an in­land salt sea.

61:3.9The Ice­land land bridge sub­merged, and the arc­tic wa­ters com­min­gled with those of the At­lantic Ocean. The At­lantic coast of North Amer­ica rapidly cooled, but the Pa­cific coast re­mained warmer than at pres­ent. The great ocean cur­rents were in func­tion and af­fected cli­mate much as they do to­day.

61:3.10Mam­malian life con­tin­ued to evolve. Enor­mous herds of horses joined the camels on the west­ern plains of North Amer­ica; this was truly the age of horses as well as of ele­phants. The horse’s brain is next in an­i­mal qual­ity to that of the ele­phant, but in one re­spect it is de­cid­edly in­fe­rior, for the horse never fully over­came the deep-seated propen­sity to flee when fright­ened. The horse lacks the emo­tional con­trol of the ele­phant, while the ele­phant is greatly hand­i­capped by size and lack of agility. Dur­ing this pe­riod an an­i­mal evolved which was some­what like both the ele­phant and the horse, but it was soon de­stroyed by the rapidly in­creas­ing cat fam­ily.

61:3.11As Uran­tia is en­ter­ing the so-called “horse­less age,” you should pause and pon­der what this an­i­mal meant to your an­ces­tors. Men first used horses for food, then for travel, and later in agri­cul­ture and war. The horse has long served man­kind and has played an im­por­tant part in the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion.

61:3.12The bi­o­logic de­vel­op­ments of this pe­riod con­tributed much to­ward the set­ting of the stage for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of man. In cen­tral Asia the true types of both the prim­i­tive mon­key and the go­rilla evolved, hav­ing a com­mon an­ces­tor, now ex­tinct. But nei­ther of these species is con­cerned in the line of liv­ing be­ings which were, later on, to be­come the an­ces­tors of the hu­man race.

61:3.13The dog fam­ily was rep­re­sented by sev­eral groups, no­tably wolves and foxes; the cat tribe, by pan­thers and large saber-toothed tigers, the lat­ter first evolv­ing in North Amer­ica. The mod­ern cat and dog fam­i­lies in­creased in num­bers all over the world. Wea­sels, martens, ot­ters, and rac­coons thrived and de­vel­oped through­out the north­ern lat­i­tudes.

61:3.14Birds con­tin­ued to evolve, though few marked changes oc­curred. Rep­tiles were sim­i­lar to mod­ern types—snakes, croc­o­diles, and tur­tles.

61:3.15Thus drew to a close a very event­ful and in­ter­est­ing pe­riod of the world’s his­tory. This age of the ele­phant and the horse is known as the Miocene.