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submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago

Fun fact: Oil mostly comes from the a mass extinction event involving cyanobacteria, not dinosaurs. We just can't stop calling them fossil fuels.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

… are they not fossils of the cyanobacteria

[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago

Not by the usual definition. The carbon, etc that used to form the cyanobacteria is completely broken down and formed into miscellaneous hydrocarbons. There's no petrified remains, nor rock impressions of the bacteria.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

FWIW that was always my concept of fossil fuels to begin with.

Like whatever you just said, but for dinosaurs and all the life from before.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

dinosaurs are a basically insignificant % of the biomass by my understanding

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

But aren't their atoms perfectly preserved? (gasping at straws)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Not all of them. Some of the carbon atoms will have decayed into (I think) nitrogen.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
722 points (98.8% liked)

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