10 ms·

Grass appeared 35 million years ago? At the same time as the first primates? And flowers 120 million years ago? After dinosaurs appeared (220 million years ago)

by dmos62 6y ago

Grass appeared 35 million years ago? At the same time as the first primates? And flowers 120 million years ago? After dinosaurs appeared (220 million years ago)? My mind is blown. What did landscapes look like?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rosstex 6y ago
According to science television, lots of palm trees.
glial 6y ago
Lots of ferns maybe?
billiam 6y ago
What's really amazing is to think that it was only after grasses started taking over that very large land mammals could evolve on the vast marshy plains of North America and over 5 million years or so as sea levels rose due climate change become whales and other cetaceans. I wonder if humans will do the same, albeit in much less nutritious oceans that we are busily acidifying.
- simonh 6y ago
  We don’t need to evolve much in the way of new adaptations anymore, we have technology. That’s how come we can colonise environments from the frozen tundra, to tropical jungles, to the harshest deserts, and now even the vacuum of space.
  - nurettin 6y ago
    Humans didn't need much technology to live in deserts and tundras. But what if they run out of earth metals to cycle? What if they can't build sustainable energy sources? Our top modern "tech" lasts a couple of hundreds of years before totally collapsing. Humans will eventually go back to simpler tools, be it 10 million years or 100. I give it a couple of hundred thousand.
    - simonh 6y ago
      We’ve essentially built the entire modern world in a bit over a century. The only way we’ll run out of metals to recycle is if we shoot it all out into space. Otherwise it’ll still be here in one form or another. I am concerned about the long term sustainability of our current phase of civilisation. I think our current way of life is largely doomed, but we will develop new ways of life. Tens of millions of years is a long time. Who knows?
      - nurettin 6y ago
        We live in a mildly corrosive atmosphere, doesn't help with the whole metallurgy venture. Recycling goes a long way, but it will eventually be over.
- chansiky 6y ago
  That's an interesting thought. I was running last week along the beach and was thinking about how early primates/hominids might have decided what plants could be eaten and what plants should be avoided when I saw a stalk of grass with its seeds/flowers. It seemed clear to me just looking at it that the seeds might be extremely edible, and I wouldn't be surprised if many other hungry hominids(and other herbivores) came to same conclusion. What I didn't know was how recent the first grass was nor did I realize how important it might have been for the evolution of land mammals. Here's an interesting fact about grass I just learned (from Wikipedia[1][2]): > They provide, through direct human consumption, just over one-half (51%) of all dietary energy; [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae [2] http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/f-sheet/factsheet3.pdf http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/f-sheet/factsheet3.pdf
mjklin 6y ago
From Wells and Huxley’s The Science of Life (1929): It is difficult to imagine this world with all its land surfaces lifeless; yet for more than a half of its history Life played out its drama under water, and the continents were practically barren. They were stark and bare, starker and barer than the utmost desert of today. Over the bare cliffs and desolate plains the sole breath of movement came from the wind and rain. A certain margin there may have been of faintly vitalized soil. From comparatively early times, a few simple algae may have trailed their filaments over the seashore or the moist borders of rock pools, or a few bacteria invaded the crumbling earth surface... The face of the land was like nothing we know today. There could have been no real soil, for soil is largely a product of plant action. There was no carpet of plants and felt-work of roots to hold water like a sponge, preventing rapid run-off, and to blanket the ground from excessive gain and loss of heat; and so the work of frost and wind, rain and sun, was much more active. The heights of the land were worn down quicker and sediments more actively deposited, and the scenery was more angular and forbidding. Even long after the first appearance of land-plants vast regions of the land which would now be covered with vegetation remained desert or semi-desert, since all the earliest plants demanded a good deal of moisture. Plants like grasses, which can thrive on dry steppes and prairies, are comparatively modern things. The Paleozoic Era knew nothing of them and the Mesozoic comparatively little. There was a desert flora and fauna in the Triassic; but possibly at least, the regions it inhabited would today be steppes or savannahs. It is a good exercise of the scientific imagination to picture this desolate and desert earth, its continents cyclically rising out of the waters and submerging themselves again, occasionally undergoing a spasm of mountain-building or an ice age, but remaining essentially lifeless for well over five hundred of our million-year periods, in spite of the abundant presence and notable progress of life in the waters. Through all these ages, the lands remained unconquered and must have seemed unconquerable.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
> “Science knows that the disappearance of dinosaurs and the appearance of flowers occurred simultaneously, yet, strangely, it has never drawn much of a connection between the two events. It is up to perfumers to correct the oversight. > “Vegetarian dinosaurs dined on ferns, floating water plants, and the palmlike cycad. They were not very intelligent, and certainly not very French, having developed a limited, strictly specialized diet. When the great mountain building took place during the Cretaceous Period, seaways drained and swamps dried up. First the aquatic plants, then the ferns and cycads succumbed. Insufficient surface water. Some new plants had been gradually moving in, however. These plants were inconspicuous at first, and neither the dinosaurs nor the swamp plants paid them much attention. Ah, but they had plans for the future. They began to grow their roots longer and longer, sink them deeper and deeper, until they could reach the moisture trapped beneath the surface, and when their stringy little exploratory organs hit the water table-POW!” (Bunny smacked the podium; if V’lu and Priscilla hadn’t been awake before, they were now.) > “POW! They exploded in a scandalous display of sexual invitation. > “The old claw-and-fang world of drab, predatory, reptilian repression had never seen anything like this. Lasciviously colored, scandalously scented blossom after blossom flaunted its genitalia openly, enticing with visual and heretofore unknown olfactory charms any who might be inclined to sample its pleasures. > “With their appalling genius for adaptability, insects responded enthusiastically to the outbreak of sensuality. So did the smaller birds. Dinosaurs, however, were repulsed. Although their reproductive equipment must have been monumental-the penis of a Brontosaurus would have been only a couple of yards shorter than the thirty-foot organ of the great blue whale-it was kept out of sight and infrequently used. The dim-witted, thin-blooded dinosaur was not a hot lover, another way in which it differed from the French.” There was a soft ripple of laughter. Very soft. “It mated once a year, barring headaches. So put off was the prudish dinosaur by the sexy smell of flowering plants that it starved to death and went extinct rather than eat them.” - Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

by dmos62 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rosstex 6y ago

According to science television, lots of palm trees.

glial 6y ago

Lots of ferns maybe?

billiam 6y ago

What's really amazing is to think that it was only after grasses started taking over that very large land mammals could evolve on the vast marshy plains of North America and over 5 million years or so as sea levels rose due climate change become whales and other cetaceans. I wonder if humans will do the same, albeit in much less nutritious oceans that we are busily acidifying.

simonh 6y ago
We don’t need to evolve much in the way of new adaptations anymore, we have technology. That’s how come we can colonise environments from the frozen tundra, to tropical jungles, to the harshest deserts, and now even the vacuum of space.
- nurettin 6y ago
  Humans didn't need much technology to live in deserts and tundras. But what if they run out of earth metals to cycle? What if they can't build sustainable energy sources? Our top modern "tech" lasts a couple of hundreds of years before totally collapsing. Humans will eventually go back to simpler tools, be it 10 million years or 100. I give it a couple of hundred thousand.
  - simonh 6y ago
    We’ve essentially built the entire modern world in a bit over a century. The only way we’ll run out of metals to recycle is if we shoot it all out into space. Otherwise it’ll still be here in one form or another. I am concerned about the long term sustainability of our current phase of civilisation. I think our current way of life is largely doomed, but we will develop new ways of life. Tens of millions of years is a long time. Who knows?
    - nurettin 6y ago
      We live in a mildly corrosive atmosphere, doesn't help with the whole metallurgy venture. Recycling goes a long way, but it will eventually be over.
chansiky 6y ago
That's an interesting thought. I was running last week along the beach and was thinking about how early primates/hominids might have decided what plants could be eaten and what plants should be avoided when I saw a stalk of grass with its seeds/flowers. It seemed clear to me just looking at it that the seeds might be extremely edible, and I wouldn't be surprised if many other hungry hominids(and other herbivores) came to same conclusion. What I didn't know was how recent the first grass was nor did I realize how important it might have been for the evolution of land mammals. Here's an interesting fact about grass I just learned (from Wikipedia[1][2]): > They provide, through direct human consumption, just over one-half (51%) of all dietary energy; [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae [2] http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/f-sheet/factsheet3.pdf http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/f-sheet/factsheet3.pdf

mjklin 6y ago

From Wells and Huxley’s The Science of Life (1929): It is difficult to imagine this world with all its land surfaces lifeless; yet for more than a half of its history Life played out its drama under water, and the continents were practically barren. They were stark and bare, starker and barer than the utmost desert of today. Over the bare cliffs and desolate plains the sole breath of movement came from the wind and rain. A certain margin there may have been of faintly vitalized soil. From comparatively early times, a few simple algae may have trailed their filaments over the seashore or the moist borders of rock pools, or a few bacteria invaded the crumbling earth surface... The face of the land was like nothing we know today. There could have been no real soil, for soil is largely a product of plant action. There was no carpet of plants and felt-work of roots to hold water like a sponge, preventing rapid run-off, and to blanket the ground from excessive gain and loss of heat; and so the work of frost and wind, rain and sun, was much more active. The heights of the land were worn down quicker and sediments more actively deposited, and the scenery was more angular and forbidding. Even long after the first appearance of land-plants vast regions of the land which would now be covered with vegetation remained desert or semi-desert, since all the earliest plants demanded a good deal of moisture. Plants like grasses, which can thrive on dry steppes and prairies, are comparatively modern things. The Paleozoic Era knew nothing of them and the Mesozoic comparatively little. There was a desert flora and fauna in the Triassic; but possibly at least, the regions it inhabited would today be steppes or savannahs. It is a good exercise of the scientific imagination to picture this desolate and desert earth, its continents cyclically rising out of the waters and submerging themselves again, occasionally undergoing a spasm of mountain-building or an ice age, but remaining essentially lifeless for well over five hundred of our million-year periods, in spite of the abundant presence and notable progress of life in the waters. Through all these ages, the lands remained unconquered and must have seemed unconquerable.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

> “Science knows that the disappearance of dinosaurs and the appearance of flowers occurred simultaneously, yet, strangely, it has never drawn much of a connection between the two events. It is up to perfumers to correct the oversight. > “Vegetarian dinosaurs dined on ferns, floating water plants, and the palmlike cycad. They were not very intelligent, and certainly not very French, having developed a limited, strictly specialized diet. When the great mountain building took place during the Cretaceous Period, seaways drained and swamps dried up. First the aquatic plants, then the ferns and cycads succumbed. Insufficient surface water. Some new plants had been gradually moving in, however. These plants were inconspicuous at first, and neither the dinosaurs nor the swamp plants paid them much attention. Ah, but they had plans for the future. They began to grow their roots longer and longer, sink them deeper and deeper, until they could reach the moisture trapped beneath the surface, and when their stringy little exploratory organs hit the water table-POW!” (Bunny smacked the podium; if V’lu and Priscilla hadn’t been awake before, they were now.) > “POW! They exploded in a scandalous display of sexual invitation. > “The old claw-and-fang world of drab, predatory, reptilian repression had never seen anything like this. Lasciviously colored, scandalously scented blossom after blossom flaunted its genitalia openly, enticing with visual and heretofore unknown olfactory charms any who might be inclined to sample its pleasures. > “With their appalling genius for adaptability, insects responded enthusiastically to the outbreak of sensuality. So did the smaller birds. Dinosaurs, however, were repulsed. Although their reproductive equipment must have been monumental-the penis of a Brontosaurus would have been only a couple of yards shorter than the thirty-foot organ of the great blue whale-it was kept out of sight and infrequently used. The dim-witted, thin-blooded dinosaur was not a hot lover, another way in which it differed from the French.” There was a soft ripple of laughter. Very soft. “It mated once a year, barring headaches. So put off was the prudish dinosaur by the sexy smell of flowering plants that it starved to death and went extinct rather than eat them.” - Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume