Alley Oop and the Dinosaurs

When watching Alley Oop ride into the Sunday funnies on his pet dinosaur, or witnessing similar situations on the kiddie cartoons on TV, I never know whether to grimace or smile when I see caricatures of our ancestors cavorting with dinosaurs, friendly or otherwise.

The fact is, the dinosaurs did not know the same planet as we, considering the time that they were here.

The dinosaurs held sway over the earth's creatures for over 140 million years in what is known as the Mesozoic Era of the earth's history. They inexplicably became extinct about 100 million years ago.

The earliest appearance of mankind, however, did not occur until some one to two million years ago. Obviously, our forebears could not have met, even briefly, with dinosaurs.

This does not mean, however, that humans did not come to grips with other exotic and extinct beasts such as the mastodon and the saber tooth tiger which arrived long after the dinosaur was gone. There are ample cave paintings to demonstrate this, and Alaska has provided a rich fossil record of many of the mammals which inhabited the area since the ice ages (almost overnight in the earth's history--the most recent ending about 15,000 years ago).

Most of these animals now are extinct, but the record points out one thing clearly: mastodons and dinosaurs did not inhabit the earth at the same time. Nor did humans and dinosaurs, so take those Saturday morning cartoons with a grain of salt.