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It began on a single day, a day painted clearly by Black in a relatable way, but based on decades of research, some of it very recent. The K-Pg is one of those rare things in deep time to which we can actually relate. To Riley (whom I hope will forgive me for using her first name as I’ve “known” her for many years through interactions online and once in real life)-to Riley, that layer of rock is a whole world, a real world. What is the K-Pg boundary? Dryly, it’s a layer of rock rich with fossils and containing more of the element iridium than would be expected. In the the appendix to her marvelous new book “The Last Days of the Dinosaurs”, she writes of driving hours to see the K-Pg boundary, not in some museum, but in the real world. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, by Riley Black This isn’t quite science writing, isn’t quite historical fiction. Remember the scene in the original Jurassic Park when when Sam Neill and Laura Dern’s characters first see a giant sauropod dinosaur? They are overwhelmed with joy, even digging right into a pile of Jurassic shit with awe. “Science writer” doesn’t really explain what she does. Some people can not only read those layers, but write their story, paint a picture that, while maybe not making us feel deep time, transport us there. These field teach us that time is deep in ways we really can’t relate to-millions of years pass in blink, leaving just some layers of dirt for us to find and try to read. Think back 100 thousand (100K) years-still human, still presumably with human desire, hopes, fears, but honestly, we can’t relate to or even really imagine their daily lives clearly.Īnd 100K years isn’t “deep time” it’s just a sliver of the Earth’s existence. No writing survives, just a few artifacts. People are people, and as long as there has been writing, as strange as other cultures may be to us, we can in some way relate to them.īut think back a little further, say 20 thousand years. What we can relate to is his letters and writings, his wants, his joys, his regrets-things that make him a person. Into the street? Close to the drinking water supply?Īs soon as you start to really think about it there are untold layers, so many details that make his life difficult to truly relate to. He, or more likely a servant, would have to empty it. When he had to pee at night, he pulled a ceramic pot out from under his bed. We don’t really feel his life, the time it took for him to communicate with his family in the Caribbean, the way he got from his home to his office, presumably dodging horse dung in the cobbled or dirt streets of New York.

We can even relate to what the life of, say, Alexander Hamilton was like. It’s a cliche that “deep time” is almost incomprehensible to us.

And no “accident” is bigger than the “K-Pg Extinction”, the events surrounding the collision of an enormous asteroid with the Earth. This is the watchword of evolution, the reason every living thing exists-not by design, but by accident.