Do you realize we are made of the same stuff as squirrels? We modern human animals are mammals. We are vertebrates. We are primates. Do you know the story of how we got here? How we evolved? It is pretty interesting. It all goes back to the day a huge meteor struck the earth creating the greatest dust storm to ever exist. That was 66 million years ago.
It was the age of the dinosaurs. Mammals also existed at that time but they were tiny shrew like creatures, not unlike our modern squirrels. The dust storm caused by the meteor( which struck the edge of the Yucatan Penisula, Mexico where I visited while on vacation a few years back ), killed off the dinosaurs! Matter of fact it killed off most all the animals that could not hide in the ground and escape the dust. And that is why the little shrew like mammals were able to survive. They were small enough to hide underground. Do you know who evolved after these tiny shrew like mammals? The Monkeys. Do you know who evolved after the monkeys? The Great Apes. Do you know who the great apes are? Chimpanzies, bonomos, orangutans, gorillas and humans. ( We share 98% DNA with the chimps.) I visited the Wits University Fossil Valult in Johannesburg South Africa in 2015. There I saw the famous fossil named the Taung Child. It was found in 1925 by Raymond Dart. It is the skull of a young ape like, bipedal, australopithecus africanus--a 3 million year old prehuman. We modern humans are in their evolutionary line. Next group evolving from these creatures was homo habilis, around 2.5 million years ago. They were known as the Tool Makers. Then about 300,000 years ago ( all in Africa by the way ), anatomical modern humans evolved. And by 150,000 years ago we came on the evolutionary scene--homo sapiens/modern humans. Forty thousand years ago we homo sapiens ( called Cromagnons in Europe) began to paint on cave walls, and 12,000 years ago we created Civilization. So here we are today in 2023, modern humans/mammals who evolved from those tiny shrew like mammals who survived the dust storm of the Yucatan Meteor. We are made of the same stuff as they are. It is truly amazing! Those creatures in our back yard who love to eat our birdfood are our distant ancestors. We are indeed made of the stuff of squirrels. Wow.
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4 Comments:
The insight is really good. It is hard, I think, for most people to get their head around the idea that we have 90%+ of the same DNA as other mammals. But we are!
Yes it is hard to believe. Partly because our more complex brains make us feel so different from them. But our differences do not make us not mammals!!
I love the story if we evolved. The details are just fascinating. Some find it disconcerting that we are of the same gene pool as squirrels. I find it fascinating. It really does imply that we are all connected!
Thank you John Brantley. I agree that this post does indeed remind us that we humans are mammals! We are animals--unique in many ways yes--but with much in common with our earlier mammal ancestors.
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