how earth was born and which is the first mammal on earth
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Answer:
Explanation:rom the top of Shifting Sands dune in the Serengeti Plain of Africa a million mammals are in motion. Wildebeests. Zebras. Gazelles. The plain is black with them. It is wildebeest calving season, and many of those giant bearded antelope have newborns trailing them. Others walk with the distended bellies of imminent birth. From a distance the movement seems a serene and constant march toward the southeast, where recent rains have made pastures greener. But a closer look reveals details of high drama.
A young Grant's gazelle suddenly dashes between the clusters of wildebeests, followed closely by its mother. A hyena races in pursuit. The mother slows and moves evasively to distract the hungry predator. But the inexperienced fawn makes a panicky turn. Within moments it falls victim to the jaws of the hyena. A few yards away, ears twitching, the mother stands helpless. Then, as if in frustration, she charges two jackals on the sidelines of the kill.
"She must be feeling emotion, but there's no way to prove it," says Patricia Moehlman, the wildlife biologist who has brought me to Shifting Sands, a 12-foot-high (3.5-meter-high) dune that is itself slowly migrating across the plain. Continues Moehlman, "She's a mother. Her brain may not work like ours, but I think there's pain. I think there's fear. And certainly stress. We feel connected to her because she's a fellow mammal."
Local Masai women regard the dune as a sacred fertility site. Moehlman calls it "a place of pilgrimage." Indeed, no place on Earth offers a more spectacular abundance of our fur-bearing, breast-feeding brethren, especially when the wildebeests are on the march. But the wildebeests are only part of the scene. Myriad mammal species graze, gallop, prowl, and wallow in this part of Africa.
In the nearby Ngorongoro Crater a mother hippopotamus nuzzles her pink newborn in a muddy pond, while a pair of lions leisurely copulate along the roadside. In a grove of acacia trees a group of giraffes, members of a family of mammals that until 20 million years ago were small forest dwellers, nibble at the top branches. A few miles away elephants—which scientists are just now realizing may come from one of the oldest of the modern mammalian lineages—lumber toward a midday bath in a rain-swollen stream. Quick-witted vervet monkeys dash down from the trees to steal food through the open door of a tourist van. Meanwhile, one of the few surviving black rhinoceroses in the area wanders stealthily through a stand of high grasses.