[…] The same is true of the planets; we can go back to their birth and follow themto their end; we can retrace the chart of the origins of the Earth.
Innumerable fauna, innumerable flora, now extinct, have succeeded one another on our globe.
Thick forests once grew where thousands of insects were rustling, where enormous animals roamed, and where, digging in the depths of the Earth, we find hardly any debris.
All this is still and dead, but all this has lived. […]

The Evolution of Worlds and Societies – Camille Dreyfus

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