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Post by Exalt on Nov 3, 2023 1:56:08 GMT 5
I see.
But yes, a lot of what there is to say would seem to have been said at least once, by now.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 3, 2023 3:44:30 GMT 5
Alright you know what, f*ck it, I'm going to post my reviews of the first two episodes. I'll either update this post with more episode reviews, make separate posts with more episode reviews, or even just make my own thread dedicated to my own personal review and copy-paste what I write here later on as I go. “The Rules of Life” Review:- The infamous Titanis-Smilodon scene that many of us were worried about from trailers and previews is actually what starts out this very program. Well, part of it is, anyway. There’s quite a bit that could be said about the models of both animals. I’ve seen some discourse on Twitter that the feathers are not oriented correctly on Titanis, that the Titanis could likewise have mannerisms and quirks more like a real bird’s too, that the sabertooths have faces that look too much like those of modern pantherine. These all are/may be valid. But dear reader, you’re going to see the real worst part of this sequence soon enough.
- The opening sequence for LOOP is great. At least for an opening, it’s a pretty darn good microcosm of the history of life on Earth. There are fish crawling onto land, amphibians, reptiles and synapsids, the dinosaurs and the K-Pg, ice age mammals, and the melting of the ice to give way to the modern Holocene.
- ”This is not just a gathering of marine predators. It is a coming together of ancient bloodlines.”
That. That is a great line. - But then they call sharks living fossils virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Mmmm, not really. Selachimorphs (crown sharks) date back to the Early Jurassic, and the fact that they’ve evolved many different forms in that time frame alone should tell you that they haven’t exactly remained “virtually unchanged”. Was the general body plan of a streamlined, torpedo-shaped toothy predator around for this long? Sure, so in that sense you could still say sharks are highly successful and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. But it’s not nearly as long as the 400 million years people tend to imagine. That figure is for elasmobranchs as a whole (which includes rays, mind you). And elasmobranchs absolutely did NOT stay the same throughout all of this time.
- Not really a big fan of the fact that they treat dolphins and whales as though they’re different. It’s made worse by the fact that the doc* says they all have totally different origins. Dolphin and baleen whale origins are the exact same. If you ignore the humpback (which this sequence does right after covering it), it will make complete sense.
*I know sometimes I say the narrator himself claims something in my documentary reviews, but I hope I’ve made it clear before that this is not actually the narrator’s own idea, it’s the writers’. Morgan Freeman, like all other narrators, was just given the script written by the people making this program, and recorded his lines. So to be clear, there will be ABSOLUTELY NO BLAME OR SHADE ON MORGAN F*CKING FREEMAN in this review. I like his calm, deep voice for the narration. - Wow, Life On Our Planet did in four minutes what Prehistoric Planet couldn’t in 2 seasons: admit that birds are literal dinosaurs.
- We eventually get to a fundamental problem with LOOP. It puts too much emphasis on “dynasties waging war” against each other. Its view of the history of life is about “one dynasty rising, only to be vanquished by the next”. That’s a pretty distorted view of how evolution works.
- Now we get to the titular “rules of life”.
The first is that the best adapted will always win through. Okay, sounds fair, and this principle is well illustrated with the butterfly eggs (each being genetically unique). - The second is that competition drives adaptation. The statement itself is correct. But again, this documentary focuses too much on competition. Environmental change is *the* chief driver of adaptation. Competition is just one relatively small facet of it.
And what’s our example, dear reader? Oh yes…the f*cking Titanis scene. It’s said that the most intense competition is intraspecific, which gives us a pretty nice Titanis agonistic ritual. I was hoping they’d have an actual physical fight, where one gets severely injured and vulnerable to the Smilodon finishing it off…
…but nope. They just treat it like any other prey item. Like a damn ostrich.
Prehistoric Predators, you may be old (and still play into the outcompetition narrative), but you get my respect for at least depicting a Titanis being capable of killing a Smilodon. - ”Smilodon mammalian cunning”
It literally just ambushed the bird. That’s one of the oldest f*cking tricks in the book. - Not a fan of the narrative that the Mesozoic was this long-ass period of stability, and that this was the reason for the success of the dinosaurs. When the dinosaurs first appeared Pangaea was still a thing: by the end of the Mesozoic the continents had almost taken their modern form. That alone would already result in HUGE amounts of environmental and ecological change over the hundreds of millions of years it happened throughout (because shifting land masses change both land distribution and ocean circulation, and therefore climate). Lo and behold, there was a variety of different environments at different places and times during the Mesozoic (hell, just watch PhP for a glimpse of that).
In short, the Mesozoic was most definitely NOT a stable time period. Later episodes will, ironically, help to demonstrate this. - Although the doc proceeds to call Maiasaura defenseless later, the Maiasaura mothers are fairly aggressive toward conspecifics loitering too close to their nests.
- Triceratops is emphasized as a heavily armed animal living in a world where the best defenses are good offenses.
Only for it to run away from a mother T. rex and her two youngsters. I’m not really sure why they think the Trike can’t hold off the mother. Are they maybe implying that they don’t think it can hold off the mother AND the two juveniles all at once (who, if you look closely, make some minor wounds on the Trike during the chase)?
As far as the animals themselves go, other complaints one might have (that I think are valid) are the Trike galloping (especially given how it seems to be a large adult), as well as the mixed generation hunting among the rexes. - Wait am I missing something? Did they go over the third rule of life already? I’m at the part where they go over the dawn of mammals.
- Okay, now they state it outright. “A rapidly changing planet causes chaos”.
Verdict: A lot of people on Twitter say that you can pretty much just skip this episode, and I think it’s justified. Not only is it just a summary episode, but a lot of it is is just not good, especially the narrative that the history of life is about dynasties ruling and being displaced by the next, and their overemphasis on competition as the driving force of evolution. The real meat of the series, both good and bad, comes in the subsequent episodes. I do like the way they think of animal clades as “dynasties”, though. - The lightning storm-orthocone opening goes hard.
- Photosynthesis is mentioned as something that some microscopic cells just developed. These will eventually give rise to plants and give off enough oxygen for animals to proliferate. Since we’re talking about the origin of plants here, I think it maybe would’ve been a good idea to explain where plant cells gain their ability to photosynthesize? It wouldn’t take long to explain either; prokaryote swallows up cyanobacteria, fails to digest it, it becomes chloroplast. Idk, I just think it would’ve been additionally informative without taking up much time.
- Now we get to one of the strengths of this documentary. Using modern animal footage to illustrate a point. In this case, it’s early animal life. Rainbow nudibranchs and anemones are used to give the audience an idea of it.
Nitpicking a bit, but I kind of wish they didn’t say the nudibranch has “room for improvement”, which might give they impression that evolution is a process entailing “improvement” as opposed to acquiring and losing what you need depending on the context. Whatever it’s lacking in, the nudibranch obviously doesn’t need enough for its lifestyle. - Currently our oldest known free-swimming medusa (jellyfish, if you will) is Burgessomedusa from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale (Moon et al., 2023). That would be some 508 Ma, which is the time of the segment after the one set at 530 Ma. However, I wonder if they may have evolved earlier than this, and medusozoans in general were certainly around 530 Ma (the purported earliest known animal predator, Auroralumina attenboroughii, dates to the Late Ediacaran). I’m also not sure when other free-swimming predators evolved, so I can’t test their claim that jellyfish had some time all to themselves, unfortunately.
- So I know the Anomalocaris’ head shape definitely isn’t what it should be, as has been pointed out on Twitter. The dark blue color looks pretty nice, though. Also, a recent study found that swimming efficiency would have been maximized when the appendages were outstretched (as opposed to curled in like in most depictions), similar to modern predatory water bugs (Bicknell et al., 2023). Since this study is recent, I’ll excuse the doc for this.
- The Anomalocaris wouldn’t have any business targeting a hard-bodied trilobite, though. Frankly, I’m not sure it would even attempt it, given how it seems specialized on soft-bodied prey.
- RickRaptor105 made a “take a shot” tweet for this series. One of them being taking a shot every time an animal walks off into a massive gathering of its kind that emerges on camera. Shot 1.
- We cut to 468 Ma. This time the apex predators are giant orthocones. Contrary to what I first suspected, they are depicted mostly vertically, getting a bit less so when trying to snag a trilobite from underneath rocks. That actually impressed me.
However, they are not perfect in anatomy. My friend Tyler Greenfield has made a whole blog post detailing what endocerid anatomy should be like (link->). If we wanted to be as accurate as possible, they should:
>be called Endoceras instead of Cameroceras
>have an operculum divided into three parts
>have Nautilus-like pinhole-type eyes, not camera-type eyes
>have a shell that becomes a bit curved at the tip
>have ridges on the undersides of their arms (these are for gripping prey) - Freeman brings up something that made me think. He mentions how the endocerid has not only sight, but touch in order to sense prey even when it can’t see it, an advancement from earlier.
Did…did Anomalocaris use any other senses than sight to find prey? UPDATE: Okay, it likely did. - Oh god, the algae on the rock look so damn photorealistic.
- Unfortunately, this trilobite is captured by surprise. There are some gruesome sounds made as the Endoceras slices through the arthropod’s armor with its beak. The Endoceras may not look particularly accurate, but damn is its scare factor sold.
- Cut to 445 Ma. The Ordovician-Silurian extinction event. To my knowledge, this is the second depiction of this particular extinction event in a paleontology documentary, the only other one being from an episode of Animal Armageddon. Although this time, it seems to adhere more to the scientific consensus on what actually happened.
- They need to have mournful singing accompanying mass extinctions in paleomedia more. It works perfectly as we see starfish and urchins lying on the ocean floor frozen to death.
- I like how the deep ocean is noted to be a place where vertebrates don’t really excel in. Rather, cephalopods and arthropods do. This gets rid of any illusions that either one group of animals is invariably “superior” to the other.
- LOOP covers the first pulse (the glaciation) of the O-S extinction. They then mention the increasing carbon dioxide levels that resulted in the melting ice. What they DON’T tell you about is the second extinction pulse: the recession of the ice and the anoxia (less oxygen) and euxinia (toxic sulfide) that followed. The funny thing about the second pulse is that it killed off those that had become too used to life under glacial conditions.
- We’re shown the concept of dominant and sneaker males, exemplified by cuttlefish (this is seen in other species too, and is speculatively depicted in PhP’s Barbaridactylus). While a useful lesson, it seems like it has nothing much to do with the narrative about surviving cephalopods.
- We cut from 444 to 374 million years ago. Dunkleosteus’ intro is pretty badass. It’s not a descendant of Arandaspis and it wasn’t 9 meters long (even before the recent study drastically shortening it, its exact body length was a matter of dispute), but the background music accompanying it is pretty cool. So at least it’s got that going for it?
(This is a documentary, so I’ll let you decide  ). - ”Once upon a time, this defense would have worked”
I mean, doesn’t it still kind of work, just not against everything? Otherwise ammonoids wouldn’t be around at this point, let alone until the end of the Cretaceous. - Okay, the part demonstrating the utility of fish jaws is pretty nice. The sarcastic fringeheads open their mouths and what accompanies is a sound that almost sounds like a roar, which is pretty cool. I can’t tell if they edited a low volume roar in there or if this display produces some kind of sound as a side effect.
- Already covered the sharks appearing 400 million years ago thing last episode, I’m going to move on.
- I will, however, give them points showing group hunting in sharks. Fanboys love to elevate odontocetes at the expense of sharks; you might even be aware of the “shark harmless shy uwu, dolphin evil rapist” meme (although that one’s more people continuing to be ignorant about these marine predators). And toothed whales do indeed have some attributes that sharks don’t. But sharks are no less successful than or inferior to the odontocetes they now share the oceans with. This is a great example of that. Sharks proper may not have been around since the Devonian, but they have been around since the Early Jurassic, so you can bet your ass that they are still a highly successful “dynasty”. No plesiosaur, marine crocodyliform, ichthyosaur, mosasaur, archaeocete, or odontocete – all of which selachimorphs have either outlasted or continue to live alongside – is going to change that.
- The dead Dunkleosteus is a powerful image both in this documentary and in the companion book.
- Again, this mournful music works well.
- As mentioned before, this extinction event was actually made up of two separate events. These are known as the Kellwasser (Late Devonian) and Hangenburg (end Devonian) events. Dunkleosteus, used as an example of a victim of this mass extinction, survived the Kellwasser event, but went extinct during the Hangenburg event, something I find pretty interesting.
- Freeman reminds us that while life was f*cking dying in the seas in the late Devonian, life on land was sunshine and rainbows.
Verdict: Looking at everything I wrote down, I’m able to find more positives than negatives with this episode. Some of the information on specific animals could use some work. The general ideas of the two mass extinction events are covered here, but only partially. The O-S extinction event comprises two parts, as does the Late Devonian extinction event (arguably better called the Late Devonian extinctions, plural). However, it nails presentation pretty well. The terror of the Endoceras, the Dunkleosteus, the shark and fish jaw segments, as well as the two major mass extinctions. So overall, I think this is one of the more enjoyable episodes so far. |
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Post by Exalt on Nov 3, 2023 6:10:58 GMT 5
"If you ignore the humpback (which this sequence does right after covering it), it will make complete sense."
Can you explain this?
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Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 3, 2023 6:16:38 GMT 5
I already tried to explain it. Basically, they treat whales and dolphins as separate with separate evolutionary origins-->if you ignore the baleen whale they show you (a humpback I think), their narrative of "this is a gathering of bloodlines" makes sense.
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Post by Exalt on Nov 3, 2023 7:14:23 GMT 5
Oh, I thought you meant that the Humpback was some sort of weird thing by itself.
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Post by zoograph on Nov 3, 2023 18:10:30 GMT 5
Wow, Infinity Blade, it's funny that while you still think (like many others) that the first episode is a filler, I was actually upset that I nearly missed it. I wouldn’t say this is a pointless recap as well (like in The Future is Wild) – there are four segments that you can miss, which actually impacted my enjoyment of the series (for example, in the original Ep. 5 review, I was mad af that they wasted Maiasaura’s model on a 10-second screentime, or that T. rex hunt was abridged). Gotta say, Precambrian segment with our Granddaddy LUCA in it was the best addition for the awfully represented period of time I just named (with the exception of Theia in WWM, but that one sucks). The idea to educate viewers on the main ecological principles also makes it a little interesting (even if some information is oversimplified).
Also, I have to say that while many people hail modern segments, and most of the ones set in Holocene are good, I don’t like ones that try to emulate prehistory. Like how Nautilus one in the second episode uses a lot of completely anachronistic animals to prove a point that life survived in deep waters (as well as in/directly saying that it is set literally in the past). The worst one will be in Ep. 6 though, and I think you know which one is it. |
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Post by Exalt on Nov 3, 2023 19:19:49 GMT 5
I don't get the episode 1 hate either, barring the one scene. Which modern scene in episode 6 did you not like? |
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Post by zoograph on Nov 3, 2023 23:01:46 GMT 5
I don't get the episode 1 hate either, barring the one scene. Which modern scene in episode 6 did you not like? As I said, that weird anachronistic Paleocene taiga, with implications that birds (represented by an owl) ruled over mammals (vole) at that time. |
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Post by Exalt on Nov 3, 2023 23:37:44 GMT 5
I don't get the episode 1 hate either, barring the one scene. Which modern scene in episode 6 did you not like? As I said, that weird anachronistic Paleocene taiga, with implications that birds (represented by an owl) ruled over mammals (vole) at that time. If I had a nickel for every time a paleodoc portrayed early cenozoic mammals as being ruled by birds, I'd have two nickels. |
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Post by zoograph on Nov 3, 2023 23:42:51 GMT 5
As I said, that weird anachronistic Paleocene taiga, with implications that birds (represented by an owl) ruled over mammals (vole) at that time. If I had a nickel for every time a paleodoc portrayed early cenozoic mammals as being ruled by birds, I'd have two nickels. Yeah, but the funniest part is that Paleocene/Early Eocene was literally represented by two documentaries (I think?), so it's a majority lmao. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 4, 2023 3:17:50 GMT 5
Wow, Infinity Blade, it's funny that while you still think (like many others) that the first episode is a filler, I was actually upset that I nearly missed it. I wouldn’t say this is a pointless recap as well (like in The Future is Wild) – there are four segments that you can miss, which actually impacted my enjoyment of the series (for example, in the original Ep. 5 review, I was mad af that they wasted Maiasaura’s model on a 10-second screentime, or that T. rex hunt was abridged). Gotta say, Precambrian segment with our Granddaddy LUCA in it was the best addition for the awfully represented period of time I just named (with the exception of Theia in WWM, but that one sucks). The idea to educate viewers on the main ecological principles also makes it a little interesting (even if some information is oversimplified).
Also, I have to say that while many people hail modern segments, and most of the ones set in Holocene are good, I don’t like ones that try to emulate prehistory. Like how Nautilus one in the second episode uses a lot of completely anachronistic animals to prove a point that life survived in deep waters (as well as in/directly saying that it is set literally in the past). The worst one will be in Ep. 6 though, and I think you know which one is it. Those are some neat segments in episode 1, but even so I think you can still get away with getting a good idea of the series by just starting on episode 2. LUCA for the Precambrian is better than no Precambrian rep at all, but it's still not a whole lot. I mean, literally right afterwards they way ahead. True, a lot of life during that time was just single-celled lifeforms, but before the Cambrian was the Ediacaran biota, and before even that Cryogenian biota.
For some reason I feel like at times I had trouble wondering if a segment was supposed to be a modern stand-in or actual prehistory. But of course, not all segments. |
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Post by dinosauria101 on Nov 4, 2023 21:26:02 GMT 5
- ”Smilodon mammalian cunning”
It literally just ambushed the bird. That’s one of the oldest f*cking tricks in the book.
Upon a few rewatches I agree that this really doesn't seem to make sense. It's not just the fact that they are passing off the oldest trick in the book as whatever "mammalian cunning" is supposed to be, but: -Such a statement just seems so contradictory with the formal, ritual display the terror birds were doing immediately prior to the appearance of the Smilodon. I would not think any animal that can manage a display like that would be driven to extinction by another's cunning. -Even leaving that display aside, just how would mammalian cunning decimate the terror birds? Clearly ambush isn't mammalian cunning, so what is? And what about it would be a factor in terror bird extinction? -May or may not be related to the mammalian cunning, but I saw a lot of comments on Reddit saying the durability of the Smilodon was exaggerated too. And on the rewatch I can see what they mean. The Smilodon that ambushes the terror bird ends up getting a full-on kick on its flank and back leg but doesn't appear to be damaged or hurt in the least. Of course, this is completely contradictory to those nasty-looking foot claws they show the terror bird having at the start of the episode: to make it more visually believable, there should have been serious lacerations for the kicked Smilodon (maybe even life threatening lacerations given the apparent size of the terror bird compared to the Smilodon). |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 5, 2023 2:51:11 GMT 5
- ”Smilodon mammalian cunning”
It literally just ambushed the bird. That’s one of the oldest f*cking tricks in the book.
Upon a few rewatches I agree that this really doesn't seem to make sense. It's not just the fact that they are passing off the oldest trick in the book as whatever "mammalian cunning" is supposed to be, but: -Such a statement just seems so contradictory with the formal, ritual display the terror birds were doing immediately prior to the appearance of the Smilodon. I would not think any animal that can manage a display like that would be driven to extinction by another's cunning. -Even leaving that display aside, just how would mammalian cunning decimate the terror birds? Clearly ambush isn't mammalian cunning, so what is? And what about it would be a factor in terror bird extinction? -May or may not be related to the mammalian cunning, but I saw a lot of comments on Reddit saying the durability of the Smilodon was exaggerated too. And on the rewatch I can see what they mean. The Smilodon that ambushes the terror bird ends up getting a full-on kick on its flank and back leg but doesn't appear to be damaged or hurt in the least. Of course, this is completely contradictory to those nasty-looking foot claws they show the terror bird having at the start of the episode: to make it more visually believable, there should have been serious lacerations for the kicked Smilodon (maybe even life threatening lacerations given the apparent size of the terror bird compared to the Smilodon). Exactly. People will ascribe and overgeneralize certain attributes to certain clades. If you asked them what the hell "mammalian cunning" or "mammalian stamina" (something I've also heard) means, they wouldn't be able to tell you. Intelligence (as hard as that is to quantify and define, actually) isn't everything, but why should I assume a Smilodon was smarter than a Titanis in the first place? Why should I assume a Megacerops was smarter than a Triceratops that lived 30 million years before it? Because it's a mammal and the Trike isn't? You know how dumb some mammals are and how smart some birds (or even non-avian reptiles) are? |
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Post by dinosauria101 on Nov 5, 2023 3:12:01 GMT 5
Upon a few rewatches I agree that this really doesn't seem to make sense. It's not just the fact that they are passing off the oldest trick in the book as whatever "mammalian cunning" is supposed to be, but: -Such a statement just seems so contradictory with the formal, ritual display the terror birds were doing immediately prior to the appearance of the Smilodon. I would not think any animal that can manage a display like that would be driven to extinction by another's cunning. -Even leaving that display aside, just how would mammalian cunning decimate the terror birds? Clearly ambush isn't mammalian cunning, so what is? And what about it would be a factor in terror bird extinction? -May or may not be related to the mammalian cunning, but I saw a lot of comments on Reddit saying the durability of the Smilodon was exaggerated too. And on the rewatch I can see what they mean. The Smilodon that ambushes the terror bird ends up getting a full-on kick on its flank and back leg but doesn't appear to be damaged or hurt in the least. Of course, this is completely contradictory to those nasty-looking foot claws they show the terror bird having at the start of the episode: to make it more visually believable, there should have been serious lacerations for the kicked Smilodon (maybe even life threatening lacerations given the apparent size of the terror bird compared to the Smilodon). Exactly. People will ascribe and overgeneralize certain attributes to certain clades. If you asked them what the hell "mammalian cunning" or "mammalian stamina" (something I've also heard) means, they wouldn't be able to tell you. Intelligence (as hard as that is to quantify and define, actually) isn't everything, but why should I assume a Smilodon was smarter than a Titanis in the first place? Why should I assume a Megacerops was smarter than a Triceratops that lived 30 million years before it? Because it's a mammal and the Trike isn't? You know how dumb some mammals are and how smart some birds (or even non-avian reptiles) are? I've seen these stated attributes many years ago too. Overgeneralization sounds about right - admittedly it was never clear before why there was never an explicit definition to either. Aside from the obvious examples of crows and ravens for how smart birds are, I have never really bothered to research intelligence in mammals/reptiles/birds. It's always came across as too arbitrary and too problematic as traditionally used - and I guess your examples prove the latter to be true. But if you want an even more stark example, consider FISH - yes, simple, everyday fish. My experience is that some species seem to have very comparable intelligence to what we see commonly ascribed online to mammals - and yet I think just about anyone in the general public would have thought otherwise. As for how they could have improved that scene besides already-made proposals, I think the terror bird getting brought down and killed as easily as shown could have been plausible with say 6-8 Smilodon. Narratively it could have been said that smaller predators do not normally hunt larger ones, but in this case with the larger-than-average number of Smilodon together and the golden opportunity they have from the pre-occupied terror bird (that won't pick up the other fleeing as a warning), they succeed - as opposed to anything contradictory about 'mammalian cunning' or whatever. |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 7, 2023 8:17:06 GMT 5
Seemingly content with the ending of this show, I was prepared to close the video player, but then… I saw a dragonfly imago emerge from an abandoned building… and fly into a landscape of semi-destroyed London. What the hell??? Since when this documentary is a Life after People promo? Isn’t it a History Channel original? Seriously though, I loved and still love this show where people suddenly vanished, but it definitely feels out of place here. Morgan Freeman just said that we can still correct our mistakes, but this part cancels out his words and instead paints a very grim and purely speculative vision of the future that did not yet happen. Maybe I’m a little bit too harsh, but it does feel like inserting aliens in the end of Our Planet. I came back to this and I think I can offer a small defense of this final scene.
First, I think that was just the most obvious way the writers could convey the concept of human extinction to the viewers. It's a clear post-apocalyptic city (London, from the looks of it, since I think I saw Big Ben in ruins), and will easily convey the "end of humanity" to anyone.
Now, why depict human extinction in the first place, even though Morgan Freeman offers encouragement that we can stop what we're doing (which I 100% believe we should do)? Because the ending of LOOP is basically a memento mori to any person – any human – who made it to the end of the show. It says, to borrow from a plaque in Rome's Capuchin Crypt, "What you are now we used to be; what we are now you will be". Or in briefer, WWB's final, words, "No species lasts forever". If you take away anything from a natural history documentary or series that covers the history of life on Earth, it is that very lesson. Regardless of whether or not we successfully stop climate change, humanity will eventually go extinct. The only way we don't is if we can somehow find a way to leave this planet before it inevitably returns to being completely and utterly hostile to life, and from then on hop from planet to planet forever (and who can predict if we can do any of that?). If not (and let's face it, most likely not), then we will join the trilobites, the conodonts, the non-bird dinosaurs, the mammoths, and the Neanderthals in the rocks of the Earth.
An uncomfortable thought, I know, but a fact that we need to hear and acknowledge. |
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