User:Palaeontologica

"The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height."

- Carl Sagan

Hi! I'm a dumbfounded atheist guy who's interested in ancient mythology, scripture, and palaeontology.

Beginning
In the beginning, all of space existed within a single point, condensed to the point of instability, a singularity. An infinite, static point of infinite density, infinite temperature, infinite pressure, infinite curvature. A gravitational singularity: it had no edge, and it had no end, and it had no beginning. But it was inevitable that something would give, and so the event commonly known as the Big Bang occurred.

Continuation
Within the next few million years, matter stabilized, turning into molecules and atoms, and eventually elements. Soon, these elements became more and more complex. Stars appeared and a cosmic web of nebulae, galaxies and stars, planets, moons and asteroids filled the universe. After billions of years, our solar system emerged from a local star cloud, where the planets formed. A collision with another protoplanet, Theia, led to the creation of the Earth's moon.

Life Originates
Within a few hundred million years, life developed, either from simple protobionts, which are basic collections of lipids, or from basic amino acids. With the development of reproduction came the opportunity to change, and so evolution began.

Roughly a billion years ago, life had become more and more complex, and multicellular life had arisen. Roughly seven hundred million years ago, the first sponge-like animals arose. They developed an ability to sense and react to their environment, the ability to move through it, and in some the ability to produce their own food, spurring some to become capable of travelling further than was previously possible. And so evolved the first jellyfish, worms and ctenophores.

Eventually, an event called the Cambrian Explosion, initially thought to be the rapid diversification of life, took place. Some new clades evolved, though it has since transpired that many clades existed long before this. As animal life began to experiment with new bauplans, predators became more efficient. The messy anomalocaridids were replaced by jawed fish and eurypterids.

Then and Now
There are many millions of years between the last of those events and now, but to cover everything would require entire books. Michael Benton's Vertebrate Palaeontology, for example, covers the intervening years in great detail. Regardless, now, 13.2 billion years after it all began, we exist.

Stuff about me
My main interests are to do with biology - particularly palaeontology and zoology. I am, however, interested in a multitude of topics, ranging from astronomy to geology, and finally from mythology to ancient scriptures. I'm also the author of a bunch of trippy fanfics, ranging from Jurassic World: ReGenesis to A City Fallen (a weird crossover).

Favourite scripture: 2 Kings 2:23-25 - what other scripture has God unleash bears on children for mocking a bald guy?

Favourite Bible errata: "Owl husbands" and the Wicked Bible.

Favourite mythology: Norse - what other mythos has giant snakes, giant wolves, Valhalla, Ragnarok, and a bunch of chad gods?

Beliefs: I'm a materialist atheist, meaning I believe in no higher deities, nor anything supernatural. In my view, any unexplained phenomena are either hoaxes, misinterpretations of data, or something that is as of yet unexplainable.

Favourite animal: None, really.

Favourite dinosaur: Allosaurus jimmadseni for the win, baby.

Favourite TV show: Primeval.

Favourite movie: Jurassic Park.