It’s a fact that most of us have heard before, but it never ceases to be any less mind blowing: modern Homo Sapiens have only been around for about 160,000 years. That’s less than 0.004% of the time that we think Earth has existed for. Us human beings love to act like we own the place, but we’re mere guests even at this point.

While they may be long gone, all the dinosaurs and other prehistoric species have a much better claim to being long term inhabitants of this planet. Studying them is so fascinating precisely because of this, and the fact that the main record we have of them is the bones that they left behind. Every nerdy four year old has a not insignificant chance of developing a fascination with paleontology, and that’s part of what makes it so great. Plus, it inspires a lot of humorous memes.