I'd forgotten writing this, but came across it looking for something else. It's a jolly little ditty, to be delivered rapidly and with great zest. I call it ...
Nothing Succeeds Like Faunal Succession
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. --- W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado
Way back in geologic time
so scientists will all agree
my ancestors were blobs of slime
and simple as can be,
but I'm descended from the blobs
that best performed their blobby jobs
the blob aristocrats, the nobs
--- a noble pedigree!
So I'm descended from the best,
the creatures that surpassed the rest,
excelled them all at Darwin's test
and so gave rise to me.
Invertebrates were next to dare
to wriggle in the seas and squirm
and those that passed their genes on were
the finest sort of worm.
I'm sprung from those invertebrates
who had the most inverte-mates
and lots of hot inverte-dates
--- a noble pedigree!
Oh, what an heritage is mine:
one splendid and unbroken line
of creatures that made out just fine
and so gave rise to me.
When first the vertebrates were grown
to swim in oceans far and free
and flexed their novel spines of bone
in some Devonian sea
then all the fish from which I am
descended were the best that swam,
their schools passed nature's strict exam
--- a noble pedigree!
and so with pride I must confess
my lineage, as you may guess
is one long story of success
and so gave rise to me.
When tetrapods began to stand
and crawl about upon their legs
then from the best in all the land
who laid the nicest eggs
my line descends: from ranks and squads
of well-adapted tetrapods
whose strength and cunning beat the odds
--- a noble pedigree!
So I'm descended from the best,
the creatures that surpassed the rest,
excelled them all at Darwin's test
and so gave rise to me.
And in the Cenozoic world
when monkeys leapt from tree to tree
they munched on fruit and nuts, and hurled
their dung with zest and glee:
and from the simians that flung
with greatest force and aim their dung,
this is the line from which I'm sprung
--- a noble pedigree!
Oh, what an heritage is mine:
one splendid and unbroken line
of creatures that made out just fine
and so gave rise to me.
And every single hominid
that passed on their genetic strains
did best the things that ape-men did
and had the largest brains;
and so in each and every case
my forbears in the human race
competed well and took first place
--- a noble pedigree!
and so with pride I must confess
my lineage, as you may guess
is one long story of success
and so gave rise to me.
Oh, what an heritage is mine:
one splendid and unbroken line
of creatures that made out just fine
and so gave rise to me.
So I'm descended from the best,
the creatures that surpassed the rest,
excelled them all at Darwin's test
and so gave rise to me.
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