• aramis87@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Sharks are about 450-400 million years old. They were around 200 million years before the dinosaurs, and have outlasted them by 65 million years. They’re older than the North Star, the rings of Saturn, the Atlantic Ocean, and trees.

    And it took 60 million years for the trees to start rotting when they died, because the bacteria to break them down didn’t exist. Those trees died, fell over, became peat, and then eventually coal. The trees that were dead and buried trapped carbon dioxide that had been in the atmosphere. 90% of the coal we burn today comes from the period when trees didn’t rot, and we’re re-releasing all that CO2 back into the atmosphere, from where it’s been safely sequestered for 250 million years.

    • can_you_change_your_username@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      The Appalachian Mountains began forming approximately 1.5 billion years ago. About the same time that sea animals were first evolving bones. The carbon that became the coal under them was deposited approximately 300 million years ago when they formed the central continental divide of the Pangea supercontinent. That was when they were at their highest, estimated to have been about the same height as the modern Alps.

      • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Same vein, the Canadian/Laurentian Shield has areas dating back as far as 4.2 billion years, recall a geo prof in uni suggesting it would have been extremely tall, Wikipedia suggests 12km.

        Stuff gets unreal to me at geological timescales.

    • d00phy@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      See libs!? We’re just putting the CO2 back where it belongs! Check and mate climate fear mongers! /s