After the post about Jason and Tuzo yesterday, it occurred to me that it might be a little unsettling to some people, learning that two vast molten provinces have been discovered inside the Earth, and no one knows what they are.

These are very old and are NOT going to break through to the surface, for reasons that will be described this coming Sunday in the next post.

Still, to dispel any “disaster” mood, let’s watch that cat/dog scene by the Three Stooges:

The Stooges aren’t everybody’s cup of tea; feel free to skip this. It’s just that the cat/dog scene makes me dissolve helplessly into laughter every time. Also, the Stooges were more ‘woke’ for their time than you might think, in this film not following the usual industry practice back then (blackface), instead paying a real black actor to perform their usual “fantastic dancer” trope (and even giving him lines!), and slipping another film past the Hays Office to thoroughly destroy the German Nazi regime almost a full two years before Pearl Harbor.

Also I’ve read that Shemp Howard died laughing (not to make a point; the poor man had a heart attack right after telling a joke while out golfing).

We’d all like to go out that way.

Getting back to Jason and Tuzo, they are an ideal lead-in to describing the geological forces most likely to have shaped the evolution of cats and all the rest of us eukaryotes.

I won’t explain it here; I’ll try to show it to you in the series.

Where’s the cat-evolution series at now?

Basically, the eukaryotes are waiting in the background (much as they appear to have done in real life for their first billion years or so); they will return after two supercontinents form and one breaks up.

That’s right — Pangea was the most recent supercontinent, not the only one.

The breakup of the second Precambrian supercontinent that we’ll soon meet might well have helped eukaryote evolution in major ways, so it’s a good point to unite the two series and do tandem posts in each one, following the geological timeline right up through the Pleistocene ice ages.

You’ll see what I mean as it develops. Any and all helpful suggestions and other feedback are welcome, of course.

And thank you so much for your interest and support!