Main Character: Plate Tectonics

That tiger — and the little avian dinosaur in the foreground, keeping a respectful distance away from the cat — are walking along one of many river beds that cross the Terai, a flat grassy wetland that runs along the feet of the Himalayas in Bhutan, India, and Nepal.

This particular river is in Nepal, according to the photographer.

As you can see, Terai soil is deep and fertile, but mountain floods can slash through it easily. They also bring down the nearby towering range piece by piece as rounded boulders and cobblestones.

Thanks to plate tectonics, though, the Himalayas continue to rise despite this constant assault by rain and ice.

Down in the flatlands, a young Ganges River flows through the Terai, gathering in lesser streams like the one shown above and growing in size and volume as it travels more than a thousand miles eastward and then south to the distant Bay of Bengal.

India and Nepal established important nature preserves here in the early 1970s. Bengal tigers are also protected elsewhere in the region, including the Sunderbans: a vast mangrove forest that covers the Ganges Delta of India and Bangladesh.

What does all that have to do with plate tectonics?

Well, this:

A few caveats to this excellent video: Per sources that I have read, other factors were also at work during the great greenhouse-icehouse transition, but let’s save that for Chapter 18. As I understand it, there is consensus on the evolution of whales, but otherwise the India-Asia collision and its effects on plant and animal life were very complex, as this abstract shows. Not all experts agree with Dr. Hughes. In a later chapter, though, we’ll look into another, even more controversial hypothesis: that big cats might have evolved in Tibet!

Cats and Plate Tectonics

Take the part in this video where they mention cooling, for instance.

Based on how cats behave now and the ways that behavior has shaped their anatomy and that of their fossil relatives down through time, it’s likely that Family Felidae evolved to fill a predator niche in an ecosystem that existed in between the forest’s edge and an open plain. (Martin).

That was ideal! There was sufficient cover to sneak up on prey (and trees to scoot up into when danger threatened), as well as just enough open space for a short sprint and deadly pounce. (Werdelin)

Now try to imagine a place like that in Late Cretaceous times.

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Main Character: Earth

Great news!

A spacecraft has found definite signs of life on a habitable world!

Well, it was Earth and the craft was a probe named Galileo that flew past its home in 1990 for an equipment check before sailing on to explore the Solar System as far as Jupiter. (Here’s how that turned out.)

This isn’t from Galileo, but it is definitely cool. In 2020 NASA turned some of its data on Earth into music and released the video. Check out which instrument is “playing” atmosphere, water, etc., at the YouTube page.

Still, congratulations to the rocket scientists!

And even though our focus is on how cats evolved, we do need to look at Earth and ask the basic questions: where did it come from? What makes our planet such a good stage for, and cast member in, that ensemble play we call Life?

Only then will details in later chapters make sense, for instance, why cats have four legs and a long tail (mammal predators do have other options); the whole cat-dog thing and whether T. Rex ate any of their direct ancestors; why cats have pretty fur but scary claws and teeth (compared to our own flat fingernails and chompers), and so forth.

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Time: Human vs. Geological

Life on Earth is strange, and I don’t just mean physically. It’s odd how life goes on here.

In terms of time, we are so out of sync with our planet!

*About 75% of the Earth’s outer crust, where we live, is composed of rock similar to this. (Image: James St. John, CC BY 2.0)*

First, look at our natural surroundings — steady as a rock (most of the time, anyway).

And usually very, very old.

Then look at humans, or at cats — each born helpless; struggling to reach maturity; struggling more to survive and reproduce; and then aging and passing away.

It all happens quickly, too (at least to an outside observer: parts of our own lives seem to take forever).

In the wild, cats don’t live long, maybe five to ten years, or a little more if they’re tough and lucky.

*More beautiful than any rock. (Image: SantiPhotoSS/Shutterstock)*

Exceptionally elderly people might live for a hundred years, but even this is short compared to the social fabric that they are wrapped in. While often resembling a patchwork quilt, its history goes back many centuries.

The current British monarch, for example, is in her mid-90s. That isn’t very old, considering how long her royal house has been around, and it’s positively youthful compared to the age of her kingdom.

Still, what do centuries and millennia mean to a multimillion-year-old rock?

Nothing, of course. It’s inert, although there may be something living underneath it or even inside. The rock’s components — silica, oxygen, and various other elements — are just chemistry, facts for nerds to ponder.

Biology is where it’s at, and we’re at the top of the heap!

This delusion is so powerful that most of us need a strong reason to ask the really interesting question — what does that multimillion-year-old rock mean to us?

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