The prompt was "If you could change one event in the course of history, which would you change and why?" I chose this topic because I wanted to avoid the typical Holocaust or Black Death or MLK's assassination-type responses.
65 million years ago. Prehistoric North America. The stagnant, steamy air bears down on the sunbaked plain of ferns. The humidity is so intense that the air is almost tangible. A herd of quiet herbivores lounges in the open, bending their three-horned heads to graze on the endless sea of ferns. They simply refuse to exert themselves any further in the unbearable heat. Even the young ones can only tussle with each other for so long before they too graze sluggishly. The herd is so engrossed in their task at hand that they scarcely notice a rustle in the trees nearby.
Immobile, and under the cover of a nearby thrush of magnolias, stands a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Silently, stealthily, she observes the herd. For a few hours she has patiently awaited her mate, who is hiding in another cluster of trees directly across the field, to initiate the attack. For several hours longer they stare, scarcely making a sound, anticipating the perfect moment. Twilight falls. As the sun drops, so do the Triceratops, sinking to the ground to sleep for the night. The male Tyrannosaurus decides that now is the time to make his move. He thunders into the midst of the herd, his steps waking the sleeping animals left and right. The larger Triceratops don't even have the chance to circle around their young before the Tyrannosaurus singles one out, directing it toward his mate. Before long, the female Tyrannosaurus pounces, and the animal is soon brought down. The pair feasts on their long-awaited meal over the course of the night.
Such was the age of the dinosaurs. Day after day, year after year, century after century, they lived in ecological harmony. From the dawn of the Triassic Period to the end of the Cretaceous, an era spanning 185 million years, dinosaurs dominated the landscape. Then, the whole world changed. At the end of the Mesozoic Era, a meteorite the size of Mount Everest crashed into the Yucatán Peninsula, clouding the earth with pillows of ash and changing its climate forever. Most of the dinosaurs went extinct with the sudden influx of cooler weather, with only a few surviving to evolve into the birds we know today.
But what if that meteorite never struck the earth? What if the dinosaurs were given free reign to live on to the present? A different world we would have, certainly, like a page straight out of Jurassic Park. With this completely different range of wildlife, the entire biosphere would bear only a slight similarity to that of today. To study the dinosaurs, we would not have to rely on fossils and other geologic records, mere imprints of what life was really like. Instead, we could observe these prime biological specimens in the flesh.
For me, a self-declared dinosaur enthusiast, this opportunity would be an experience of a lifetime. As a young child, I watched every dinosaur documentary that there ever was, read every dinosaur book I could get my scrawny hands on, and constantly pestered my parents to take me to the local natural history museum. Yet, those dinosaurs that I wanted to see so much could never leave the realm of the screen or of my imagination. I think it goes without saying that, given the chance to alter any event in the history of the world, I would prevent the impact of the meteorite that struck Earth 65 million years ago and initiated the decline of the dinosaurs. That way, a Tyrannosaurus hunt on the wide North American plain would be more than a mere fantasy - it would be visible, touchable reality.
Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.
