Worldbuilding

Comments

• DrBob@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This all true, but wood still burned. You think forest fires are bad now? Imagine several centuries of dry timber stacked up waiting for a lightning strike.

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  • forrgott@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Suddenly it makes sense why some trees only disperse seeds after a forest fire.

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    • resting_parrot@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Some trees have phases that depend on fire. The long leaf pine has a grass phase where it just looks like grass for a few years and stores energy in its roots. When a fire comes through and burns the above ground part, it will grow 3-4 feet in a few months.

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  • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Now imagine the atmosphere is ~%30 O²

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• cogitase@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There is a huge diversity of plastics being produced today and each one will require a unique evolutionary adaptation to be biodegraded. We’re also continuously developing new plastics and new combinations of plastics such as core-shell polymers. You also had much more wood available than you have plastic scattered across the earth, meaning much more energy available for any microorganisms that evolved to degrade wood and thus a greater evolutionary advantage. I don’t think microbes are going to save us from the plastic scourge anytime soon.

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  • kapulsa@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Agree with all points except the availability of plastic.

    There might have been more wood, but the mass of plastic is enormous. I remember that it’s more than the mass of all animals. The value should be from this study, but it’s closed access, so I can’t check.

    www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3010-5

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    • Blooper@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wouldn’t it also be pertinent that we store a lot of waste plastic with our other plastics? I mean, our landfills are pitri dishes for a massive variety of microbes to have a go at consuming plastic. Compared to a much less diverse population of those that would have been around at the time to learn to consume wood.

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• ryedaft@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  old lady from the Titanic -meme

  It’s been 60 million years

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  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    60

    More like three hundred (unless you mean how long it lasted).

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    • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I meant how long it lasted

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• Yondoza@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Is chemical energy more readily available from plastics than from wood? You’d have to imagine it is if they’re that quick on the uptake.

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  • fullsquare@awful.systems ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    with wood, the problem was with lignin which is tightly crosslinked, meaning that it’s insoluble and organism willing to eat it has to secrete some enzymes to break it down in smaller bits that can be absorbed

    depending on plastic, this first step might be easier or even happening on its own. there are already bacteria that feed on nylon but nylon starting materials are easier to digest for them

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    • xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      lignin balls

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  • forrgott@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Wasn’t there some effort to guide that particular evolution? Or was it really just one of those,“holy shit look at this” discoveries?

    Now my curiosity is piqued; I may have to look that up later today.

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Coal is this, except it’s largely fronds, which the trees shed three same way modern ones shed leaves. IIRC the trees were related to ferns. Before that there were big fungus pillars that served as trees.

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  • velummortis@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Fungus pillars? Like giant mushrooms??

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    • Sidhean@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yes (sorta maybe)! They were pillars, no dick topper, and may have been covered in algae. There’re also signs of animals living within them. Truly the trees of their time.

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• Fusselwurm@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What, you eat polyester? That does it. We’ll coat the whole world in PFAS, try and crack those.

  Kind regards, humanity

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  • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Check mate humanity

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• echodot@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If you actually look up ancient trees they were basically just giant ferns. Versions of them are still around today although they do now rot of course when they die. They’re super creepy looking.

  I would really like some for my fern garden but unfortunately it is literally cheaper to buy a top of the end smartphone than it is to buy those things. It’s really weird going to a garden centre with everything costing single digit prices and then suddenly there is this tree thingy with commas in its price.

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• MeatPilot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hypothetically, if we were alive during that time period. We would have microwood in our balls and not microplastic?

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  • echodot@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You wouldn’t survive very long. The oxygen level was insanely high back then, and for some reason very high oxygen levels can make you go blind if you breathe the air for too long. Also it would have got unimaginably cold at night even in the tropics (virtually no greenhouse gases) so you’d probably freeze to death.

    But also you’d starve to death because there would be nothing to eat since fruit and vegetables wouldn’t have yet evolved.

    You would probably have better luck surviving on an alien planet than Earth several hundred million years ago.

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  • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If we were alive back then, either we took those bacteria with us, or we would cease being alive fairly quickly; I don’t think our intestines work without them

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    • MeatPilot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Hypothetically, if were absent of contaminating the environment by not having that bacteria and instead used nano technology to break down food.

      Would we still have microwood in our balls?

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Every species started out as an invasive species.

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• dastanktal@hexbear.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Life finds a way

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• stelelor@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Unlike trees, plastic is not self-renewing. So when humanity goes extinct, there will no longer be a steady supply of plastic for these microbes. They will crash just as quickly (geologically speaking) as they arose.

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• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  the first trees wernt trees in the technical sense, since gymnosperms hadnt evolved yet, it was large version of todays lycophytes(which are smaller versions of the carbiniferous giants)

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  • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    “Tree” isn’t a phylogeny, it’s a strategy. They definitely were trees.

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