History of us, the mammals, according to me, Mahdroo (liberties taken)
375 million years ago
We were fish, but it sucked because the ocean was so full of bigger mean fish always eating us, so our most clever ancestor "Tiktaalik" climbed onto a beach, and the big fish could not eat him. They gnashed their big teeth and splashed about in vain. Tiktaalik laughed at them. He laughed so hard he started coughing. Took us awhile to figure out how to breath out of the water. But then on land there were delicious bugs everywhere! so Tiktaalik decided to stay on land. We all stayed, and we ate all the bugs and we did not get eaten by big mean fish anymore! We were tetrapod amphibians now and we spread all across the land. The world was ours!
359 million years ago:
Living on land was nice but boring, because we were small, because the bugs were all small, because the plants were all small, because the danged fungi kept eating all the plants before they could get big. Boring.
360 millions years ago:
The MOST bonkers thing EVER happened! In the war between fungi and plants, the plants won the most incredible victory of all time. They invented bark and cellulose. Fungi couldn't figure out how to do jack-squat about it. Plus the plants defeated gravity! Victorious and unstoppable the new plants had a non-stop tree orgy for 60 million years. Everywhere was suddenly ground-to-sky tree forests, and every square inch was pumping out bajillions and quazillions of oxygen into the sky. It was crazy. The air was suddenly all nice and posh and for us, breathing through our skin stopped being so hard to do, and the tasty bugs got bigger and tastier, and we got ultra beefcake huge. Like 6ft long salamander huge. And it started raining and never stopped. And we could have a million babies if we had water to drop them in, and suddenly everywhere was a forest swamp. So we had frajillions of babies! Amphibians FTW!
340 million years ago:
You'd think we would have learned the lesson of the big mean fish, but again some of the big amphibians got mean and took all the best forest/swamp spots and started trying to eat us (jerks), but at the periphery where it was dryer and crappier and unoccupied, we said "F you big amphibians! We'll live out here you selfish a-holes!" but again with the coughing because it too dry out there. Ugh. So we evolved some slightly better lungs. Hard work, but whadyagonna do? Then we evolved another clever trick, a layer around our eggs to keep them wet on the inside if they got dry on the outside. Amniotic sacks are the mother of invention! Take that amphibians. Keep your gross swamps. We couldn't have as many babies as the amphibians, but the crappy outlands were ours! We were hardcore and fringe. We were "amniotes."
335 million years ago:
The continents all smashed into each other forming Pangea. Bonus! We spread over all the dryer regions of the whole planet! The jerk amphibians still wouldn't share all the posh swamps. I mean gross swamps. They sucked. But over time Pangea's shaped changed the weather and there were more dry crappy outlands for us to take over (nice).
312 million years ago:
Us hardcore amniotes split into two groups. The others wanted more holes in their heads (not sure why). We named ourselves synapsids and they got named sauropsids. We weren't that good at names yet, and the split didn't seem like a big deal at the time.
305 million years ago:
Suddenly fungi freaking finally figured out how to eat trees! Crazy twist in the plot! BOOM fungi exploded planet wide and ate all the mega forests. Tree party over. Oxygen dropped, rain stopped, and the planet got hella dry really fast. Suddenly everywhere was a crappy dry region. No more water and all the amphibians got wrecked, and their billion babies died. Jerks deserved it. They are lucky any of them survived at all, but only the tiny ones living in a few posh swampy places. We didn't even care. Whatever.
Meanwhile all us hardcore amniotes realized "OMG the whole planet is crappy outlands now! We can live anywhere and everywhere! LETS GO!" and within like 5 million years we took over the whole planet and all the best spots were ours! YAS QUEEN.
300 to 250 million year ago:
Us Synapsid amniotes were living like kings. We were everywhere, even the gross swamps. I mean posh swamps! Heck yeah! Victory was ours and we could eat anyone we wanted. Yum. We grew huge and grand and majestic. Good times. We were evolving to be mammals, but not really quite yet.
Meanwhile, the other kind of amniotes, with the extra holes in their heads (weird). They were tiny and not a big deal. Sometimes we ate them. So they kept trying to evolve weird ways to not get eaten, like being lizards (too dry), then snakes (too gross), then turtles (too crunchy), then crocodiles (too rubbery). Whatever. We didn't care. They were still small and not that delicious. They were so 2nd string beta. We were proto-mammals and the world was ours!
250 million years ago:
Siberia exploded. Like all of it. It fucking exploded man. Dammit. Volcanos trashed the planet. Shit. All our best spots went dsystopian hellscape. All our best awesome huge synapsids family got extincted. Dammit. Only our tiniest small proto-mammals survived. Worst thing that ever happened. Stupid Siberia.
250-66 million years ago:
Fucking dinosaurs dude. The other amniote sauropsids with their dumb extra head holes evolved into dinosaurs. They took over all the best new niches, and ate any of us mammals they could find, and only tiny mammals that could hide in the ground survived. Shit it sucked. Stupid dinosaurs. It went on for like 200 million years! It SUCKED.
In order to survive we had to evolve really fancy teeth that could crush bug exoskeletons (what else could we eat?). We had to only go out at night (to not get eaten) so we evolved really good eyes, and body temperature regulation aka awesome fur. We evolved really good ears, and big noses. It kept us alive mostly, but it wasn't enough to overcome the damn dinosaurs. This whole window of time we tried so hard, but it sucked. This is when we truly became "mammals."
134 million years ago:
Flowers suddenly evolved, and exploded planet wide. Seeds! Fruit! The dumb dinosaurs didn't even care. Idiots. I mean, there was suddenly seeds and fruit everywhere! Free food, and the dinos were all like "nah we good." Morons. We got really really into seeds and fruit.
Around this time [we really don't know when] us mammals diversified into lots of different kinds of mammals, such as:
proto-rats
proto-anteaters
proto-dogs
proto-monkeys
proto-horses
proto-elephants
proto-dead-ends (these ones died later)
but we all looked the same: like little rats or racoons. Why? Because the stupid dinosaurs kept eating us. If we tried to specialize or come out during the day or do anything cool like get bigger they just ate us. God we hated them.
66 million years ago:
Giant meteor killed all the damned dinosaurs (except birds) . HECK YEAH!!!! Frickin finally... but we didn't get to enjoy it at first because the meteor set all the planets trees on fire. And uh, y'know how we were all into seeds and fruit? Well dangit, the best of our arboreal tree-loving ancestors, got extincted. Again. GAH! And they were so cool too! Mostly ground tromping mammals survived. Only one little teensy group of tree-hanging mammals made it -us- tiny primates. Weird looking boogers we were. We were hanging out in like a posh hidden swamp in a canyon crevice in Africa or something that somehow survived the global apocalypse. No one thought much of us. Lucky. Without many trees tho we had to learn to run around in the open, but we got pretty good at running on 2 feet. Unique! Most the ground walking mammals thrived tramping around on four feet. They filled all the niches. Mammals for the win! Elephants and mammoths got pretty cool. Lots of big mega fauna! They turned out to be tasty!
When the trees grew back we decided not to go live in them anymore. But none of the other mammals remembered how to live in them either, so the birds got em. That was probably a mistake. Every time I see an eagle kill a squirrel I wish we'd killed off those damned dinosaurs when we got the chance. The birds actually did try to go dinosaur on us again at one point. There was this killer terror ostrich that tried to make a dino comeback, but the direwolves ate its face off. No more of that dino reign. Nuh uh. Mammals all the way baby! Anyway, so with all our hair and ears and keen noses and good eyes, and amniotic sacks and strong lungs, things have been pretty great for all of us. Mammaries worked out well. Our opposable thumbs proved really handy and that two leg thing totally rocks. We got some big brains and here we are! There are still fish and amphibians, and amniotes with too many holes in their heads but we can eat all of them now. The past 65 million years have been good for us mammals, and the last 10,000 years have been particularly nice for us humans. I doubt anything bad will happen. Hopefully we'll continue to be awesome for millions of more years!
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