A Lot of Big Words:
400 Million Years Ago
"Go on Zack, you can say it."
"No, I won't," he said firmly.
Alice was skipping over the green mossy rocks chanting, "Pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian! C'mon Zack, it's easy!"
"No!" Zack was used to his sister's constant chattering. Sometimes he listened and sometimes he ignored her. She loved words, and sometimes he wondered if she was using them to fill up all the big scary spaces in the world. Maybe she thought they would keep her from feeling lonely. If Alice had known what Zack was thinking, she would have told him he was wrong. Though, even she didn't know why she liked words so very much. She could no more imagine not speaking than she could imagine not breathing.
"I got a big blue furry man that comes out of my bedroom wall and keeps the evil spirits away." Zack was offering his sister his own imaginary friend. He meant that a friendly monster was a lot better for company than a lot of words, but his sister wasn't listening.
"Pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian! Just guess which era we're in now, Zack!"
Zack looked around. The green stuff in the ocean had reached up onto the land sending long mossy fingers out exploring among the rocks. Small green ferns sprouted in the thin soil near the water which was deeper here as the rocks dropped down into the sea. As Zack stared at the water he suddenly saw something with many legs scurry away into the liquid shadows.
"Oh, look!" he exclaimed as he dropped to his knees beside the water. The ocean was alive with life. Zack could see strange creatures with jointed bodies moving among forests of even stranger plants that swayed their long branches in the still water, as if they were dancing. A many tentacled beast dragged its shell past a squishy cup-shaped thing that Zack thought was a plant until it suddenly shot a mass of its own tentacles out through the opening on top and grabbed a tiny jellyfish that was pulsing by.
In the distance a huge smooth back broke the surface of the sea for a moment before diving back down into the depths. Before Zack even had a chance to ask, Alice was shouting, "It's the first fish!" She danced a few steps on the rocks, ecstatically.
Zack grabbed her shirt and pulled. She had to sit down quite quickly or she would have fallen into the water.
"What's this thing?" he asked his sister, pointing to the many legged thing that had first caught his attention.
"That? That jointed thing that looks like it's got long antennae? That's a trilobite. Actually, they don't exist anymore in our time. They're extinct."
"Extinct like dinosaurs? Is that a dinosaur?"
"No, silly," said Alice. She sounded patronizing, but this time Zack didn't mind. He was just too interested in the strange creatures he saw in the sea to take offence. He wanted to know more about them.
As usual, Alice was happy to oblige, "Weren't you listening to what I was saying before? Pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian! Those are the names of all the ages before the dinosaurs. An age is a long time, and each of these ages was millions and millions of years long. When we started walking we were in the Pre-Cambrian, that's the name of the time from the very beginning of the earth to when the first plants grew in the sea. After that comes the Cambrian, when the first animals lived in the seas..."
"Are we in the Cambrian?" asked Zack. There were certainly lots of animals in these waters!
"No, I think we must have walked past the Cambrian, because there were Trilobites then, but there weren't any of THOSE things." Alice pointed to the many tentacled thing that was still dragging its shell slowly across the bottom of the sea. "That's an early cephalopod, by the way. It's the great great to a billions greats grand-daddy of octopuses and squids. And actually, they're called cephalopods, too, because 'cephalo' means 'brain' . . . "
Zack realized Alice was getting off the topic again. She did that a lot, he thought disgustedly. It must be the result of knowing all those big words. "ARE we in the CAMBRIAN?" he asked very loudly.
"No! I told you, we're past the Cambrian, and we're past the Ordovician, too. I think we're probably in the Silurian or the early Devonian. I'm not sure because I didn't get a chance to see if that big fish had jaws or not. The first fish had to suck all their food up and they couldn't chew because they didn't have jaws or teeth. Hey, see that starfish?"
Zack looked. Alice was pointing at a squishy red thing that was moving very slowly across the rock closest to them under the water. It was shaped something like a quarter and its body rippled. It looked like it was trying very hard to move as fast as it could, which was sad because it was hardly moving at all.
"That's not a starfish," objected Zack. "It doesn't have any arms!"
"It's a grand-daddy starfish. The first starfish didn't have arms, just like the first fish didn't have jaws and the first octopuses had to drag heavy shells everywhere."
Watching the tiny creature struggle over the rock, Zack could see why starfishes would want arms. He could also imagine that jaws and teeth would make catching food a lot easier if you were a fish, and octopuses seemed to get along fine without big shells. Alice seemed to know what Zack was thinking because she added, "It's called evolution. Evolution is what we call it whenever a creature changes itself to get along better in the world. It's only little changes at first, but over millions of years all those little changes add up and before you know it, you've got a whole new creature."
"How?" asked Zack.
"I don't know. I guess every baby is a little bit different from its mommy and daddy, and if the difference is a good thing than that baby grows up and has lots of babies of its own and it passes that good difference onto them."
"Will Mommy come and get us, soon?" asked Zack. Alice's comment about mommies and daddies had him wishing his were there to take them home.
"I don't think so. I don't think she knows how to walk though time the way you do, Zack."
"Am I different from Mommy?"
Alice didn't answer. She often felt very different, especially when she went to kindergarten, even though she liked the other kids and her teacher very much. Her mommy always said that difference was a good thing, but Alice wasn't always sure her mommy was right. So far all being different meant was that the teacher gave her more work to do than any of the other kids and it wasn't even fun work.
"I want to see the dinosaurs," she said, instead. "Where's that road, Zack? We've still got the rest of the Devonian and the Carboniferous and the Permian to walk though before we get to see any dinosaurs."
Good or bad, it was Zack's difference that was going to get them home!