fossilesqueRay is basic.
immutableIt’s such a shame that all of human knowledge isnt readily available to this person. Oh it is, on the very device he’s using to post this, how embarrassing
Maybe it feels counter-intuitive to some that sharks were there before trees…
But I hope it is intuitive that there was water long before there was soil? Then it’s just a small step to realize life in water has had a much longer time to develop.
Or at least lichens.
That’s debatable, most sources estimate mosses to have been there before lichens. It’s all estimations spanning millions of years of course.
Mosses have leaves with chlorophyll though! Way more interesting in the context of there being trees or not. Lichens are just scabs on a rock.
Lichens are way younger than scientists thought
Lichens -- a combo of fungus and algae -- can grow on bare rocks, so scientists thought that lichens were some of the first organisms to make their way onto land from the water, changing the planet's atmosphere and paving the way for modern plants. But a closer look at the DNA of the algae and fungi that form lichens shows that lichens likely evolved millions of years after plants.
Um say what? Lichens are a complex composite life form that is a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms, a fungus and an algae or cyanobacterium. Scabs on a rock! The disrespect!
Obnoxious creatures they are, always trying to take the shine from mosses. Mosses don’t need symbiosis because they’re perfectly able to survive harsh conditions by themselves. There’s been hardly a need to change their perfect designs for millions of years.
Lichens just make new symbiotic relationships whenever they feel like it. They’re a promiscuous lot. Promiscuous scabs on a rock.
TIL humans are technically lichens.
I’m pretty sure they’ve never thought about what soil actually is and think it’s just been around forever since it’s just dirt.
PenguinCoderThe oldest shark teeth are from the Early Devonian, about 410 million years old. These are without a doubt sharks, although different species than exist currently. The earliest fossil of a plant engaging in this evolutionary strategy is a 12 meter tall palm-like plant from China. It dates back, again, to the Early Devonian, but less than 400 million years ago.
Which means the first toothed sharks predate the first plant which could be called a tree by 10 million years.
Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn!
“If a tree is so basic, then why aren’t there trees growing in the middle of the ocean?” seems like the sort of argument that would impress Ray.
TropicalDingdongBull kelp:
Huh. Yeah I never knew. Never really thought about it but knew not nonetheless.
Trees aren’t basic just because they don’t move.
This is the cope I say about myself every day.
Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn.
Sharks are older than the current rings of Saturn, and I’ll bet that the e-ring or f-ring (whichever one is primarily made of ice spewed out of enceladus) has been around for a few billion years.
ThunSharks are ^possibly^ older than the north star
According to claims on social media platforms such as Reddit and X
I fucking hate modern media.
RamenJunkieYes, stop calling it X and call it Twitter.
I always thought that this was because Polaris wasn’t aligned with the Earth’s axis until fairly recently.
The Stoned HackerIts because Polaris is actually three stars in a trenchcoat, two of which are older than sharks with one of them being younger. Polaris Aa, the brightest star and what we call the North Star, is probably younger than sharks, while Polaris Ab is probably older than sharks. Polaris B is almost certainly significantly older than sharks.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Ask that dude if he ever saw a tree under the ocean.
I knew someone who utterly refused to believe that dinosaurs weren’t the first organisms in existence. He literally thought it was dinosaurs, then there was an asteroid impact and then basically humans arrived about 10 minutes later.
People have absolutely no understanding of the immense amount of time that has existed before we came along.
Mind he also gave me that whole if earth was 1 cm closer to the sun, we would all burn up malarkey, so maybe he’s just an idiot.
There are the same number of hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water as there is stars in the entire solar system.
Thank you for the acknowledgement, always nice to meet a fan.
Draconic NEOI guess it’s possible, there is a theory that the solar system has a second faint red or brown dwarf star orbiting in the furthest outskirts of the solar system. I’m not sure I buy this hypothesis though, there is so little evidence. And it would be one of the more strange binary systems out there (binary stars are usually close together).
Bruh… H2
A LOT of the “misunderstandings” about the world stem from people having nonreal concept of numbers. Especially anything that is rural vs urban and population. People who know everyone in their 900 person town have no concept of the million large city nearby. Also money, which creates the whole “I can work hard and become a millionaire” idiocy. Like ok, if you work your entire life and spend nothing but absolute basics you might have a million or two in savings, when you die.
TheNamlessGuy1000% engagement bait
Can blow some MFers mind when you tell them trees took Earth by surprise and were so new that they didn’t rot. Trees just fell over and stayed there forever, well … until they got turned into oil.
So coal is just charcoal very well aged?
The first trees also caused climate change by absorbing a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere. And now the burning of those same trees is causing a second round.
Sharks have existed for so long that they have made almost TWO orbits around the milky way.
The species has existed for longer than Pleiades
The species has existed for longer than Pleiades
Now that blows my mind. I often think of astrological timescales to be so much longer than anything on earth.
Not to continue to blow your mind but their species is old enough to have witnessed the first light from the birth of the North star (if they weren’t busy being absolutely magnificent apex predators)
Who the fuck has a basic question like this and posts it on Twitter rather than just looking the answer up
Hey grok, get a load of this guy 👉
For anyone wondering:
- 538 mya: cambrian explosion
- 419 mya: sharks
- 385 mya: tree ferns, horsetail trees & co. (also, Ginkgo)
- 245 mya: conifers (lignin)
- 230 mya: lignin decomposing
- 130 mya: flowering plants
- 65 mya: forests covering the globe
- 1.5 mya to recently: four glacial periods