Explore "Big Ancestor" by F.L. Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
People who still believe that man was created supreme among the beasts, as Adam was created master of all he surveyed (except Eve), blithely close their eyes to the anthropological, embryological, and paleontological evidence. Most modern scientists worth their salt believe that the direct ancestors of man were extremely humble animals.
The dominant scientific school of thought, probably the most valid on the present evidence, holds that those ancestors lived and evolved through the eons of the Great Reptiles-tyrannosaurs and the rest-because they were small, skulking, and only a nuisance to the dominant life-form of the time. They could scuttle in the lush undergrowth or scamper through the high prehistoric trees, keeping well out of the way of the monster saurian "elites" that ruled the roost for hundreds of thousands of years. And thus they survived-an occasional meal for their "betters," but more usually a mere pest. Vermin.