I first came across the reminder that dinosaurs,far from being unsuccessful, had been around for longer than mammals and make our history look pretty puny, in one of the late John Brunner‘s novels. So I was pleased to find this fact used as an example again in number 7 of Jamais Cascio‘s “Twelve Things Journalists Need To Know to be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters”:
“7. Dinosaurs lived for over 200 million years. A favourite pundit cliche is the “dinosaurs vs. mammals” comparison, where dinosaurs are big, lumbering and doomed, while mammals are small, clever and poised for success. In reality, dinosaurs ruled the world for much, much longer than have mammals, and even managed to survive a planetary disaster by evolving into birds. When a futurist uses the dinosaurs/mammals cliche, that’s your sign to investigate why the “dinosaur” company/ organization/ institution may have far greater resources and flexibility than you’re being led to believe.”
On a shorter time span, I wrote a piece at the time of the Tsunami at the end of 2004, with what may also be another reminder of our relative frailty and could be a useful corrective to the arrogance we display about how we live today:
“What we often forget is that our taken for granted world is an experiment that has been running for much less time than the Norse Colonies in Greenland. No doubt for much of the time the Norse thought things were going pretty well for them and ignored the signals that things might not be as they seem.”