We capture time in our timepieces, watches and clocks. But do we really capture it? Or by naming time in seconds and hours mostly just help us make appointments and feel like we have a secure reference point to deal with the vastness of existence?
I love to go to museums like the American Museum of Natural History to walk through their articulated fossil exhibits of big extinct mammals and dinosaurs. The abundance of creatures that come and go somehow gives me a sense of everything being alright in the world. Sure, our influence on the earth, like being responsible for the disappearance of countless creatures feels horrendous. But seeing how fruitful life is over time through the museum displays reminds me that life is prolific, wondrous, and will endure. And that we are just momentarily here as this weird-looking big-headed creature.
Fossil No. 5147 at the museum is a bird-sized juvenile Pterodactylus, a flying creature before the existence of feathered birds as we know them. But it is likely that Pterosaurs had something like feathers possibly even as long as 200 million years ago. I find it amazing that scientists can come up with so many facts and hypotheses based on old bones.
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-mystery-feather-fluffy-pterosaurs-reignited.html