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.
Ray is basic.
Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/ee4f58a1-0f28-4ace-8add-f1d6f5c58573.jpeg
Comments
bryophile@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
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.
bryophile@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Who are these people?
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Or at least lichens.
bryophile@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
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.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
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.
mech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn.
xx3rawr@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Sharks are ^possibly^ older than the north star
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
According to claims on social media platforms such as Reddit and X
I fucking hate modern media.
Brgor@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I always thought that this was because Polaris wasn’t aligned with the Earth’s axis until fairly recently.
wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
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.
JillyB@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Ahh fuck
Academic_Bumblebee@ani.social 2 weeks ago
This is fuckin metal
BillyClark@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
“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.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Penguincoder@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
The 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!
Wilco@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
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.
Gumus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
☝️🤓 Trees turned to coal. Oil came from plankton and marine life.
lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
So coal is just charcoal very well aged?
diaphanous@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
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.
NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
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
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
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.
NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
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)
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
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
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Who the fuck has a basic question like this and posts it on Twitter rather than just looking the answer up
fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Hey grok, get a load of this guy 👉
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Huh. Yeah I never knew. Never really thought about it but knew not nonetheless.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Ask that dude if he ever saw a tree under the ocean.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
This whole drowned forests off the coast of the UK and I also believe New Zealand has something similar. That whole region is basically just a drowned continent with a few mountains sticking up, forming islands.
immutable@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’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
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
To be fair, the entire thing could be made up. This post is likely to get far more likes and comments than just stating sharks are older than trees.