“Few animals larger than a hundred pounds survived the catastrophes of the late Cretaceous. The dust cloud brought night and cold to the surface for months. The dinosaurs froze and starved to death. But there were small creatures who took shelter in the Earth. And when they emerged they found that the monsters who had hunted and terrorized them were gone. The Earth was becoming the Planet of the Mammals. And the Earth continued its ceaseless changing.”

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.