Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-10-18

VerSlty OF Cau1Ornla was an IN
quiry into the causes of animal
migrations and evolutons during
the last hundred million years
He found, as the result of his years OF study
of animal evolution disclosed by the fossil
record that there has been a sort of long
rhythm in the development of life. There have
been long, peaceful periods Of uniform, mod
crate climate all over the earth, when animals
have been pretty well satisfied with things as
they found them and have not bothered to
change much
Then there have come other periods of tur-
moil and change-heaving up OF mountains and
plateaus, gathering SHOWS on their tops turning
into vast glaciers, climates no longer uniform
but sliced up into zones: life no longer easy
and comfortable but full Of change and I'M
certainty. so that a species must meet outer
change with inner change or die
Three times at least, as Prof. Matthew read
the record, have such major revolutions upset
the earth, prodding the plodding steps Of evo-
luton into a jazzier tempo Three such major
revolutions. with other lesser revolutions in be-
tween, some of them possibly more or less local
in their effects.
The first of these revolutions came a most
unimaginaby long time ago, long before the
Age of Coal long before the Age Of Fishers
that preceded it. What that revolution ended
is unknown. What it started was livelier de-
velopment of the lower orders of life, and either
the beginning or-more likely-the energetic
unfolding of the vertebrate family tree.
Expressed at first only fishes, this evolu-
ton of the backboned animals got far as
the beginnings of the lowest handwriting, air
breathing animals. relatives of toads and sala-
manders, before the second great revolution
ended the epoch and initiated new age.
THE aristocracy of this second dispensation
were the famous dinosaurs. But while
these ponderouS gentry were ruling the earth
and caring whit about changes TO come,
meek little primitive mammals, weak of body
but beginning to be nmble of wit, kept out of
their way well possible and prepared to
inherit the earth. The dinosaurs had their
day. but in the end they ceased to be.
They ceased to be, perhaps. because the
earth coming to long period of change,
Of mountain upheavals and plateau fittings, OF
beginnings of zonation in climate that cul-
minated in the most recent and perhaps the
most severe of all the ice ages the earth has
known. The world is still but half emerged
from this ice age. for Greenland and Antarc-
tica are still buried under permanent ice, and
every Winter wide snow cape spreads itself
over most Of the temperate zones.
The ages that stretched themselves between
the end Of the dinosaurs dominance and the
melting away of the glaciers that covered most
of Europe and more than half of North Amer
lea were times of the most rapid animal evolu-
ton that the world has ever seen. Together
they are Jumped by biologists as Tertiary"
time. It is an old-fashioned name, and does
not mean today what it did when first applied
but it Is a convenient classification.
But better than Tertiary is the name Age
Of Mammals. For it was during this time that
the warm-blooded, milk-giving creatures, to
which man himself as physical being Is re-
lated went through the series of changes that
brought them to their present state. More
swiftly than any other great class of animals
ever evolved, the mammals deployed them
selves tried out and discarded experimental
models by the dozen and hundred and at the
end got down to something like 1891 designs.
This speed in evolutionary change was due
to restlesSness in the earth itself, DR.. Matthew
believed. There was mountain building at in
tervals all during Tertiary time. Some Of the
greatest ranges, such as the Rockies, the Sierras
and the Himalayas, were either lifted up entire
ly or received notable additions during that
epoch.
h NATURALLY, with SO much disturbance 60
ing on, there must have been grave up
sets in the woodland and pasture economies Of
the animal world. Even though the changes