Please lets think about time for a second

"Consider this: Tyrannosaurus lived closer to us in time - 66 million years ago - than it did to Apatosaurus, which lived 84 million years prior."

As Switek says "our planet has a history so deep that we can barely comprehend it."

Dinosaurs ran around on the earth for 230 million consecutive years. Consider then that the entire span of human existence covers maybe 300,000 years. That's 0.3 million. It's nothing.

This is a timeline of the history of the earth. (Ma is million, Ga is billion.) See the little dot for Hominids? That's us. That's everything. See the long reign of the Prokaryotes (whatever they are)? That long purple tail represents a mind-boggling depth of time.

For most people, dinosaurs represent the oldest things. They stretch back to the misty beginnings of the earth. But look at that little red dinosaur line. Dinosaurs are practically modern.