AN UNFATHOMABLY long time ago, two drifting, lonely landmasses began rubbing against each other. The earth moved – a corrosion of boundaries uniting them as one. Although the energy that brought them together quickly dissipated, the cooling husk that remained soon formed a stable union. It seemed they were destined to face the yawning stretch of eternity together as one.

A few hundred million years passed. Then the peace was broken. A bizarre, upwardly-mobile chemical skinbag had evolved on Earth – a creature curious enough to wonder why the terrain under its feet differed so greatly.

Driven by their covetous, territorial nature, this species was compelled to draw attention to this strange anomaly. Labelling things seemed to lend the fluid nature of reality some clarity, so the hilly, chilly top of this landmass became “Scotland” and the bottom “England”. One became two. It should be noted the Spice Girls explain all this better than I do.

Geologically speaking, it’s pretty clear why the ancients drew the line where they did on their sabre tooth tigerskin maps. Seismic upheavals of sedimentary rock are still clearly visible across the length and breadth of Scotland and our acrid soil was always clear evidence of a distinct origin story. And speaking of origins, it’s certainly notable that England spent many millions of years comfortably attached to mainland Europe.

Conversely, Scotland spent its wild youth as a globe-trotting shape-shifting bachelor – the David Bowie of landmasses. A scorched desert, deadly swampland, tropical rainforest, frozen tundra – you name it, we’ve been it.

With such a colourful life story, it’s perhaps no surprise that evolution’s true missing link – the miraculous common ancestor that first made the leap from sea to land – has now been discovered here. Wha’s like us? Everyone and everything, it seems.

Stan’s the man

LONG after the efforts of the late Stan Lee and Stan Laurel are forgotten, the work of the similarly late Stan Wood will remain. A former shipbuilder and insurance salesman, Scotland’s own legendary Stan earned a well-deserved reputation as the greatest fossil hunter the country has ever known.

Despite having no formal training, he is directly responsible for what is being considered one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. Not counting methylenedioxymethamphetamine or lysergic acid diethylamide, of course.

A few months before his death in 2012, Stan and his colleagues had announced the discovery of several new fossils at a site in the Scottish Borders – some amphibian-type creatures biologists call tetrapods. These are the somewhat miraculous fish-like oddities that genome mutation gifted fingers, toes and lungs – allowing them to venture out of the sea and onto land. Wiggle your ears? Webbed feet? Breathe? That’s your ancient tetrapod DNA coming back on you.

Wood’s discoveries were even more seismic than he thought, however. Further excavation of the site after his death led to something truly awe-inspiring being unearthed – one of the earliest known creatures to live on land. Scot-land, to be exact. Scientists named it “Tiny” – rejecting the initial suggestion of “Wee” in case anyone thought they were talking p**h.

“It was one small step for Tiny, one giant leap for vertebrates”, says palaeontologist Dr Nick Fraser. “Without Tiny, there would be no birds, no dinosaurs, no crocodiles, no mammals and no lizards. Obviously, we wouldn’t be around either.” One thing is certain then – Tiny’s feet were no tiny feat.

No Gods in the gaps

TINY’S nickname may lack a bit of imagination, but her scientific one is worse – Aytonerpeton microps – translating as the rather derogatory “creeping one from Ayton with the small face”.

The “small face” was actually rather presumptuous – for no-one has ever seen Tiny. Her fragile bones remain entombed deep inside a rock – and were only spotted by accident when a CT scan revealed her 4cm skull inside, alongside some “fingers” and “toes”.

Despite her name, Tiny’s significance is huge. She and her kind hail from a mysterious era in the Earth’s history known as Romer’s Gap – so called because of the lack of fossils previous to Tiny’s discovery. Perhaps the folk who decide such things will now rename the era “Romer’s Tiny Gap” for it has certainly narrowed. The find has also broadened understanding of how lucky humans were with evolution – for without Tiny, we’d be unable to use our weapons or mobile phones.

The joke’s on us

IT’S a shame the joy over Tiny’s discovery is just a transient, fleeting moment in time - knowledge that will soon to be lost to our inevitable mass extinction event. None of our species’ scientific endeavours, achievements and discoveries will matter, for not even the mighty city-building, moon-landing homosapien can defy the inevitable fate of every other species that has existed on this planet. The only difference is that we’ll be the first-ever form of biology to die out though the wilful destruction of our own environment. Quite an achievement.

With certain doom encroaching, at least we haven’t lost our sense of humour. It's certainly a shame no-one will be around to laugh that a wee prank our species will play on the highly-evolved cockroach geologists or alien tourists in Earth’s far future.

The foundations of this prank are currently being laid by paleontologist Jack Horner, a highly respected and well-kent scientist who aims to bring back dinosaurs within five years – by manipulating the genes of chicken embryos to birth tyrannosaurus, triceratops and the like.

So if Jack ever achieves such a feat, future studies of today’s fossils will falsely conclude humans co-existed with dinosaurs. The joke’s on us, of course, but such deliberate reality distortion would certainly be a fitting testament to our species’ gallows humour. Wha’s like us?

Yet, it’s a more plausible outcome that no-one will ever study the fossils from this current era. Our presence on this planet will likely remain buried for several billion years - until the sun expands and consumes all evidence for our existence in flame. Before that event passes by unnoticed by an indifferent infinite universe, the scar tissue binding the planet's ancient landmasses will have long since cracked back open, the continents once again setting sail, perhaps forming a new Pangea - the imperishable authority of plate tectonics dismissing all previous unions as transitory, temporary and, ultimately, meaningless.

And finally...

IT’LL never make the next SNP White Paper, but Scotland’s great gift to the world was not just Tiny and her clan birthing all living things. We should also note the achievement of another wee prehistoric Caledonian creature – a not-so timorous water beastie that invented sex by growing the first penis.

Fossils of the 400 million-year-old fish-like creature Microbrachius Dicki – the name honours Scottish fossil collector Robert Dick, nothing else – were first discovered in the late-19th century but it was only recently that researchers confirmed it was very aptly named.

This is due to its bony, ahem, “clasper”, an organ that transferred sperm in a more direct manner than simply spraying indiscriminately over eggs laid on the ocean floor.

The discovery of the first ever penis in Scotland beat off stiff competition when it came to other global claims of copulation in the earliest vertebrates. We know of everything else Scotland gave the world – TV, penicillin, racists in white cloaks – but the first ever penis remains inexplicably absent from our history books.

The positioning of the fossil’s nascent appendage also suggests that these creatures copulated sideways – notably, the first known display of spooning. Another one to mark up for Scotland – surely just as significant an invention as telly, and perhaps the very reason you're here today reading this. It also means any Coatbridge natives caught heavy petting in the Time Capsule pool can simply blame their genes if the fiscal decides to prosecute.