The Urantia Book

Settings

Reading
Theme
Text size
Line spacing

Typeface

Width
Alignment
Show
Listening

Kept in this browser only.

Read through

Bering Strait land bridge

11 paragraphs · about 3 minutes · 3 chapters

The paragraphs in the index’s own groups, a chapter to each, in the order the index prints them, and in the order of the book within each. A paragraph read in an earlier chapter is named in one line.

lemurs, turtles migrated over 2 paragraphs

60:2.13Tur­tles in­creased dur­ing this pe­riod, first ap­pear­ing in North Amer­ica. Their an­ces­tors came over from Asia by way of the north­ern land bridge.

62:1.2While these early lemurs evolved in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, the es­tab­lish­ment of the di­rect mam­malian an­ces­try of man­kind took place in south­west­ern Asia, in the orig­i­nal area of the cen­tral life im­plan­ta­tion but on the bor­ders of the east­ern re­gions. Sev­eral mil­lion years ago the North Amer­i­can type lemurs had mi­grated west­ward over the Bering land bridge and had slowly made their way south­west­ward along the Asi­atic coast. These mi­grat­ing tribes fi­nally reached the salu­bri­ous re­gion ly­ing be­tween the then ex­panded Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea and the el­e­vat­ing moun­tain­ous re­gions of the In­dian penin­sula. In these lands to the west of In­dia they united with other and fa­vor­able strains, thus es­tab­lish­ing the an­ces­try of the hu­man race.

red race migrated over, 100,000 – 85,000 B.C. 2 paragraphs

64:6.5About eighty-five thou­sand years ago the com­par­a­tively pure rem­nants of the red race went en masse across to North Amer­ica, and shortly there­after the Bering land isth­mus sank, thus iso­lat­ing them. No red man ever re­turned to Asia. But through­out Siberia, China, cen­tral Asia, In­dia, and Eu­rope they left be­hind much of their stock blended with the other col­ored races.

79:5.6One hun­dred thou­sand years ago the dec­i­mated tribes of the red race were fight­ing with their backs to the re­treat­ing ice of the last glacier, and when the land pas­sage to the West, over the Bering isth­mus, be­came pass­able, these tribes were not slow in for­sak­ing the in­hos­pitable shores of the Asi­atic con­ti­nent. It is eighty-five thou­sand years since the last of the pure red men de­parted from Asia, but the long strug­gle left its ge­netic im­print upon the vic­to­ri­ous yel­low race. The north­ern Chi­nese peo­ples, to­gether with the An­don­ite Siberi­ans, as­sim­i­lated much of the red stock and were in con­sid­er­able mea­sure ben­e­fited thereby.

rose or fell 7 paragraphs

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.

60:1.7–12 · six paragraphs not cited here ·

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.

60:3.885,000,000 years ago the 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.

61:0.2Dur­ing this Ceno­zoic age the world’s land­scape pre­sented an at­trac­tive ap­pear­ance—rolling hills, broad val­leys, wide rivers, and great forests. Twice dur­ing this sec­tor of time the Panama isth­mus went up and down; three times the Bering Strait land bridge did the same. The an­i­mal types were both many and var­ied. The trees swarmed with birds, and the whole world was an an­i­mal par­a­dise, not­with­stand­ing the in­ces­sant strug­gle of the evolv­ing an­i­mal species for su­prem­acy.

61:1.12Dur­ing the lat­ter part of this epoch most of Eu­rope was sub­merged. Fol­low­ing a slight land rise the con­ti­nent was cov­ered by lakes and bays. The Arc­tic Ocean, through the Ural de­pres­sion, ran south to con­nect with the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea as it was then ex­panded north­ward, the high­lands of the Alps, Carpathi­ans, Apen­nines, and Pyre­nees be­ing up above the wa­ter as is­lands of the sea. The Isth­mus of Panama was up; the At­lantic and Pa­cific Oceans were sep­a­rated. North Amer­ica was con­nected with Asia by the Bering Strait land bridge and with Eu­rope by way of Green­land and Ice­land. The earth cir­cuit of land in north­ern lat­i­tudes was bro­ken only by the Ural Straits, which con­nected the arc­tic seas with the en­larged Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

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.

61:4.6The cli­mate was grad­u­ally get­ting cooler; the land plants were slowly mov­ing south­ward. At first it was the in­creas­ing cold in the north that stopped an­i­mal mi­gra­tions over the north­ern isth­muses; sub­se­quently these North Amer­i­can land bridges went down. Soon af­ter­wards the land con­nec­tion be­tween Africa and South Amer­ica fi­nally sub­merged, and the West­ern Hemi­sphere was iso­lated much as it is to­day. From this time for­ward dis­tinct types of life be­gan to de­velop in the East­ern and West­ern Hemi­spheres.

Onward

Cited alongside: land bridges, Europe, Siberia, Asia, Iceland, Mediterranean region, Panama isthmus, red race