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Fossils on Fossils (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 153 points 2 months ago

There are fossilized humans. Fossilization really doesn't take that much time, geologically speaking; it just requires very specific conditions.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

About how much time are we talkin here?

[-] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago
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[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I know there's some animal fossils in New Zealand that date back to its colonization by the ancestors of the Maori, so about the 1400s. Though I don't know if they are partially or fully fossilized.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Human species before H. Sapiens

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Also makes you wonder what fossils they mean, of the same species or then already extinct ones.

Because according to a quick Wikipedia search the oldest hominid fossils (?) are something like 7 millions years old

That's much much shorter than dinosaurs where around but hey " hominins are around long enough to unearth hominin fossils"!

[-] [email protected] 129 points 2 months ago

It is more chronologically accurate to show a t-rex being hit by a car than it is to show a t-rex eating a stegosaurus

[-] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I said I'm sorry. But if you're going to let your T-Rex out at night you should at least put a reflective collar on it.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago

Hi, I was just calling because I live down the street from you, and your daughter come to my house today and she kick my t-rex.

Your daughter come to my house today, And she come on my property and then she kick my t-rex. And now my t-rex needs operation.

[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago

How cruel.

My T-Rex ist mostly armless

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

That would be a knee slapper if I could reach.

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

This is the comparison I was looking for. It’s great to explain that media shows them together but untrue, it is a totally different idea to explain the staggering time difference between the two.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

You made me scroll up to the picture again, looking for a T-Rex or a car

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

And people mocked me for my human-tyrannosaur slashfic on ao3. Well, who's laughing now?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I don't remember that episode of the Flintstones

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[-] [email protected] 124 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This is only mind blowing because popular media likes to show every dinosaur at once. Like there's a lot of things depicting stegosaurus fighting T-Rex; but these animals never would have met. They're from entirely different periods.

[-] [email protected] 97 points 2 months ago

How dare you suggest DinoTrux lied to us!!!

[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If gasoline is made from dinosaurs, what did the Dinotrux run on?

[-] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago

The blood of their enemies!!!

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

DinoTrux drove the earth for such a long time BP Oil^®^ existed while DinoTrux drove the earth.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

You can tell because non of them has feathers.

[-] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We live closer to the time of T-Rex than T-Rex lived to the time of Stegosaurus.

67 million years separate us from T-Rex.
83 million years separate T-Rex from Stegosaurus. (150 million years between us and Stegosaurus)

[-] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

on a similar note: When cleopatra lived, the pyramids were already ancient

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Cleopatra lived closer to t-rex than us

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

You were born after cleopatra died 🫠🤑👻

Follow me for more Greece facts.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 67 points 2 months ago

This meme made me gasp loud enough that my girlfriend was worried something was wrong.

Then I had to explain that I'm 41 years old and was just shocked by a dinosaur fact.

[-] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

To be fair, things can fossilise very quickly given ideal conditions. Still dinosaurs reigned for a lot more time than mammals and frankly nature is still feeling the loss in certain ways.

https://www.americanforests.org/article/the-trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/

[-] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

Another fun fact (dino facts are the best facts): There are more "dinosaur" species alive today than there are mammal species.
11,000 bird species alive today (approx)
6,000 mammal species alive today (approx)

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago
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[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

Also, my favourite fact is we know almost nothing about dinosaurs from jungles and mountains. Most of our knowledge comes from wetland and oceanic creatures because of the way fossils are formed.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Forty-one?! You're practically a fossil!

[-] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

There's always a relevant xkcd

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[-] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago

Birds are considered to be dinosaurs. Birds exist now. We are finding dinosaur fossils now.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

That's what the XKCD that was posted says. Mostly.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago
[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Does getting buried in pumice count as becoming a fossil? Because Pompeii was only a couple thousand years ago.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

From wikipedia: A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. 'obtained by digging')[1] is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

Answer: yes. It does count. Specifically carbonization.

Personal take: when I think of a "fossil", I think of the stereotypical mineralized bones. Like the T-Rex in the museum of natural history that most people have seen from various movies and TV shows. Thinking of human and human predecessor bones as fossils is just weird to me.

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[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Also, water you are drinking has probably been peed by dinosaure. Several time. But probably not peed by a human.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Second relevant xkcd of the comments https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Well, there are human fossiles aswell and we have been here for a pretty short time.

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Well, there are plenty of hominid fossils and we humans are plentiful.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Which makes me ask, why were mammals able to evolve to produce an apex predator that relies on it's inventiveness (Humans) in quite a short time, but no similar "dinosaur" got to that point in a much longer period?

We're searching planets for signs of life as a pre-cursor to intelligent life, but there's no guarantee that life will evolve in the same direction as ours.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Corvids and psittacines display human child level intelligence. They use tools. They recognize other people. Hell the psittacines can mimic speech.

I personally suspect it's a matter of energy density. Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying. Doesn't leave a lot of energy left over for a massively hungry brain. No clue what's holding back penguins, emus, and cassowaries.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Most birds are extremely light and efficient. Their bones have evolved to be light weight to help with this. Some species even fly in a V formation to conserve energy.

Evolution doesn't mean get better or smarter. It just means the species can survive and keep reproducing. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica for example, where they nest in a place where there are no predators. It seems insane the hardship and their silly walk which takes forever. But it works.

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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
1265 points (99.3% liked)

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