The American West In The Oligocene Period
warm
forests and grasslands
our ratty ancestors
giant mammals
followed by glaciers, then men
bellowing titanotheres
squalling sabretooths
fifteen to twenty million years ago
good hunting and fishing for time travellers
small remote ancestors of horses
shovel-tuskers
pre-human insectivores
This list is taken from the opening story, "Time Patrol," in Time Patrol. It is usually possible to extract more information than expected from an Andersonian text. There is something more about this period in The Shield of Time:
31,275,389 B.C.
human forebears in African jungles
wolfhound-sized equine ancestors earlier than mesohippus or miohippus
lionlike nimravus (shot by time travellers they attacked)
sabre-toothed eusmilus (also shot)
thirty million years before Wanda's birth
rooting merycoidodon
"...constellations unknown to Galileo."
-The Shield of Time (New York, 1991), p. 136.
Since, in "Time Patrol," Manse Everard is based in New York in 1954, the next past time visited is 1947 in London but all that Everard sees there then is the inside of another Time Patrol warehouse before he and Charles Whitcomb depart for a private inner office on Old Osborne Road in 1894.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
In THE SHIELD OF TIME Anderson was able to make use of further discoveries about the Oligocene than was known in 1954.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that putting the Patrol HQ in 1894 makes a lot of sense. Far less surveillance.
Specifically in the period, 1890-1910. That was Western milieu HQ for 1850-2000. Just those twenty years handled/managed/coordinated all the Patrol work for a century and a half for that part of the Earth. Twenty years would be an eyeblink in the career of a Patrol agent especially with their indefinitely prolonged lifespans.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but 1890-1910 was still CONVENIENT, what with gov'ts of that time being, as Stirling said, so much less suspicious and inquisitive.
Ad astra! Sean
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