1:24 God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind;" and it was so.

A Multidisciplinary Contextualized Analysis of Select Passages From Genesis V2.0

[This is an excerpt from an exhaustive personal study of most of the first 9 chapters of the book of Genesis. This is a vastly expanded effort from the original version that can currently be found here downloadable for free. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a non-symbolic literal reading of the text to our current understanding of language, paleontology, and the physical sciences. Constructive discussion on the merits of this study is encouraged!]

Approximate Year: 65 Ma

Historical Period: Paleogene

Event: Grazing mammals

Geological evidence suggests that nearly all land animal species appeared after the end of the Cryogenian (or “snowball earth”) period of the Neoproterozoic Era. For the next 500 million years since then, the earth’s climate has been considerably warmer including extended periods where the earth was entirely ice free and global temperatures had little variation. It is only because of these lengthy temperate periods that an ecosystem existed active enough to support the largest land animals to ever walk the earth.

Where the previous era (Carboniferous) was notable for its gigantic winged insects, from the Permian era (300 Ma) onward it is the walking creatures that make the biggest impression. The 100 foot long Argentinosaurus or the 20 foot tall Spinosaurus were the behemoths of their eras dwarfing the land animals of today.

As various cataclysmic events made it prohibitive for many of these larger and therefore more ecologically sensitive animals to survive, the smaller and more adaptive mammals thrived. With their humble origins as “creeping things” like the Morganucodontids, they soon overtook all the remaining species becoming the largest remaining land animals as well as the apex predators on land and at sea.

The most recent ice age began within the last 3 million years (Pleistocene Epoch) eliminating many species not capable of surviving the cooler climate. The reduced plant growth driven by the advancing glaciers further limited the size and population density of the animals that could survive.

It is worth noting that, although the glaciers of the Pleistocene maximum have largely receded, the earth is still to this day in the throes of that same ice age. We are far from the climate in which the ancestors of all animalia developed and thrived. And geological records suggest that before our current period is over, glaciers might once again stretch over the latitudinal tropics.

But were the conditions on earth to someday return to that of the homogeneously warmer Cretacious period, perhaps plant life will again be globally abundant to allow animals like the great sauropods to again roam the earth.

There is a substantial overlap in the geological and fossil records between all of the animal categories implied in these verses going back over 500 Ma to the beginning of the Paleozoic era. But, as suggested earlier, the notable plant growth during this era would largely obfuscate these smaller creatures with the exceptions of the large winged flying insects. It would not be until the end of the Paleozoic or even into the Mesozoic (250 Ma) that the dominance of walking animals or dryer conditions on land make their presence more notable.

In any case, it is my opinion that the most notable examples that dominated different eras would have become obvious to a time-traveling observer in roughly the same order as described in the “Yamim” of Genesis. That such a chronology is part of one of the oldest recorded scriptures and effectively in the same order as current paleontological research is uniquely notable. This is despite all other scientific understanding prior to 200 years ago or other competing theological beliefs.

To date this “era”, arguably one could aim as far back as the Permian period 300 Ma. I’ve chosen arbitrarily to focus on the term “Behemah” which typically implies “livestock" or a grazing animal. With that consideration, the earliest large mammalian herbivores roamed the Earth before the Neogene period roughly 25 million years ago.