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Paleontology studies this. Perhaps you should study paleontology?
Too late, I studied Finance and National Economics and work in Logistics. Space and evolution are my biggest interests outside of that, though
It’s never too late to study something new!
Paleontology only scratches the most superficial part of the surface, since the vast majority of organisms die without getting fossilized.
Your statement struck me as strange and somewhat ironic because paleontology involves a lot of digging deep to find fossils. And while I obviously can’t disagree with you on the fact that a lot of organisms did die without getting fossilized, I disagree that paleontology is just “scratching the surface“. Certainly, not everything can be revealed via paleontology for the obvious reasons, but it has revealed an awful lot.
It might be "an awful lot" in absolute terms, but certainly not in relative terms.
Take for example just the dinosaurs. They lived in a relatively short time span from -245mio years until -66mio years. A total time span of 179mio years.
Google tells me that between 300 and 1000 species of dinosaurs have been identified (the estimate is that broad because it's not certain that each identified species is really an unique species).
That means, there's about 1.6-5.5 species of dinosaur per million years that we know of. Or to put it differently, there's on average 181k - 650k years between each dinosaur species we identified.
Homo sapiens have existed for 200k-300k years. All domesticated animals exist for less than that.
Within that time span tens of thousands of species have come into existance and died out again.
That's about the order of magnitude of what we don't know and probably can't ever know.
And remember, these numbers are only for the relatively recent era of the dinosaurs. It's much, much worse for times that are longer ago.
Also, even of the species that live right now, estimates say that we only know about 14% of all species.
"An awful lot" in this context is still relatively little, hence the very apt usage of the phrase "scratching the surface".
Imagine being the first crab
New shell who dis?
I feel like seeing life before it had been through so many evolutionary shocks would have been neat
The ones after the next extinction event will be even better!
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
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