Illusion of Permanence

We often live under the illusion of permanence. Our cities, our routines, our species—everything feels solid, destined to last. But history, especially natural history, has a different rhythm. It doesn’t whisper; it strikes.

This week, I wandered into the world of ancient giants—dinosaurs. Through a spellbinding documentary on how an asteroid ended their reign, I found myself both awed and humbled. Once upon a time, they ruled this planet. Towering, ferocious, and seemingly untouchable. For 160 million years, Earth was theirs. And then—just like that—they were gone.

A rock from space. Roughly 10 kilometers wide. That’s all it took.

The asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, creating the Chicxulub crater—150 kilometers across. The force unleashed was unimaginable: billions of times more powerful than the atomic bombs we fear today. Fires erupted, skies darkened, and global temperatures plunged. Photosynthesis halted. Food chains collapsed. Nearly 75% of Earth’s species vanished. The age of dinosaurs ended not with a whimper, but with fire and ice.

One layer of iridium-rich clay—found across the globe—is all that remains to mark the moment. A fingerprint of the cosmos. And when scientists drilled deep into the Chicxulub crater, they found shocked quartz and fractured rock—evidence that matched the scale of the catastrophe.

The small survived. Birds—descendants of certain dinosaurs—flew on. Tiny mammals burrowed and endured. The ocean lost its ammonites and many of its plankton, but some creatures persisted. Life, although battered, found a way. That’s the haunting and humbling part.

The big and bold—gone. The small and adaptable—remained. Their extinction wasn’t just an end. It was a beginning. Because in that silence, in that slow rebuild of ecosystems, mammals began to flourish. And somewhere along that winding evolutionary path—we emerged.

So when we marvel at our skyscrapers and AI models, when we think we’re untouchable at the top of the chain, perhaps it’s worth remembering: dinosaurs once thought so too. Nature doesn’t play favorites. It plays by balance, by rhythm, by reset.

We are not here despite them. We are here because of them. And one day, perhaps something else will be here because of us.