dicynodont

Updated: June 19, 2025

"And what if we could help mankind, and leave the traces of our work upon it to the end? Mankind is only an ephemeral blossom on the tree of time; there were others before it opened; there will be others after it has fallen. Where was man in the time of the dicynodont, and when hoary monsters wallowed in the mud? Will he be found in the aeons that are to come?

Olive Schreiner - The Story of an African Farm, a novel

And, if you would learn a secret, even before man trod here, in the days when the dicynodont bent yearningly over her young, and the river-horse which you find now nowhere on earth's surface, save buried in stone, called with love to his mate; and the birds whose footprints are on the rocks flew in the sunshine calling joyfully to one another even in those days when man was not, the fore-dawn of this kingdom had broken on the earth.

Olive Schreiner - Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland