T-Rex: One day money started to LITERALLY grow on trees. This was, briefly, terrific news!

T-Rex: Then it very quickly became horrible, completely apocalyptic news!

T-Rex: World authorities not only had to deal with collapsing economies, but also with the fact that trees now producing currency had stopped producing their regular fruit. This led to the deaths of fruit-eating animals, particularly birds - whose extinctions had a tremendous, devastating effect on the ecosystem precisely at the time when we needed food-chain stability the most.

Utahraptor: But some of us survived, right?
T-Rex: Oh sure. WE'RE here!

T-Rex: Ironically, the money-growing trees soon died off, since they produced useless legal tender instead of, you know, nuts and seeds. And once they were gone we were back where we started, only without any fruit, birds, and hundreds of other species. It took millenia for similar traits and species to re-evolve.

T-Rex: And that's why EVEN TODAY we repeat "Money doesn't grow on trees", as both a warning of the NATURAL ORDER and a command from the ancients to DESTROY any trees defying it!!
Off panel: Incredible! And yet, like all folk etymologies, also extremely accurate!
T-Rex: RIGHT??