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you ever just think about the carboniferous
the carboniferous is the best because there& #39;s terrestrial life but it& #39;s completely fucking bizarre. even the trees are fucked up.
any other time period - even one with dinosaurs - you& #39;d be like "yeah ok this is earth, sure". carboniferous, you& #39;d be like "oh SHIT what planet is this"
and yet i feel like i can hear and smell this weird geometric forest full of man-size centipedes and carnivorous mega-frogs. i can feel the sweat on my brow
just want to have a temnospondyl pop out of a creek next to me and go "GRRRRRRAAAARRRRRRRRK"
most of the fungi and bacteria that now cause decomposition in forests hadn& #39;t yet evolved to tackle this exciting new "wood" stuff so it was a landscape of endless, century-deep drifts of undecaying fallen forests, endlessly layering themselves upwards
anyway sometimes the utter irrecoverableness and alienness of the past makes me feel like a beetle at the bottom of one of those century-deep drifts. crushed by the dreamlike impossibility of everything that came before
