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Is this actually a widespread belief held by adults? I think the first time I came across it expressed was in Airplane II - “Well, let's see: First, the Earth c
by jameshart 5y ago
Is this actually a widespread belief held by adults? I think the first time I came across it expressed was in Airplane II - “Well, let's see: First, the Earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil.” - where, like, the naïveté of the statement is the joke, right?
So then when Pixar movies have an oil company called ‘Dinoco’ in them, I’d always assumed that’s as part of that same kind of knowing ‘obviously only a child believes oil comes from dinosaurs’ reference.
The idea that oil could be made from dinosaurs is just.. on its face, it’s not plausible, right? It can’t be something people are actually taught. Please.
- pinkmuffinere 5y agoI hadn't given it much thought before, but when I saw the title on hacker news I clicked on it in order to learn what the answer was, haha. I'm generally good at math / physics / engineering, but much worse at chem / bio / wherever-you-learn-about-oil (i guess geology?). All this to say that I bet there are many adults who "believe" it, but maybe they just haven't thought much about oil. I think your message was truly sincere surprise and I didn't find it rude, but it reminds me a bit of this article which I've found very useful in my personal life: https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/04/27/no-feigning-surprise/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/04/27/no-feigning-surprise/
- pharrington 5y agoI know I thought oil was decomposed+compressed dinosaur, though I have no idea where that belief came from. Memes are powerful.
- a3n 5y agoI've always thought oil came from dinosaurs, and had no idea about the plankton connection until this article. In other words, I woke up this morning "knowing" that oil came from dinosaurs, and I will go to bed tonight knowing it came from plankton. I'm 63.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mark-r 5y agoIf you ever come to doubt the power of advertising, just remember Sinclair.
- Razengan 5y agoBest computer ever.
- dredmorbius 5y agoC'mon. It's a dinosaur.
- jrace 5y agoI think it is less about the myth being taught, and more about the truth not being taught. I know I assumed Fossil Fuel = meant the fuel came from fossils, and the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "fossils" is dinosaurs. I just never thought to look further than that.
- seoaeu 5y agoI mean, even the simplified answer of coal coming from ancient plant matter and oil from ancient animal matter doesn't do much to dispel the myth.
- jameshart 5y agoI wonder if this is it - kids making logical inferences to connect ideas in school, and not being given quite enough information to realize there’s a gap there. And then they think that that’s ‘what they were taught’, even if no teacher or textbook ever actually joined those dots up. Similarly, I think a lot of people think dinosaur fossils are all dinosaurs who died when they went extinct, because if fossils are dead dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are famous for dying out, those must be connected, right? Whereas of course dinosaurs had actually been dying (and starting on their way to being fossils) for millions of years before the extinction event which… actually stopped them from dying any more.
- dredmorbius 5y agoIt turns out that a fossil isn't "a thing turned to stone", but rather, "a thing dug up". I'd not realised this until earlier today myself. Fossil fuels are fuels that are dug from the ground, rather than harvested from plants (as with wood or olive oil ... itself the original "oil") or animals (as with animal fats and oils). https://www.etymonline.com/word/fossil https://www.etymonline.com/word/fossil Oil indeed comes from olive: https://www.etymonline.com/word/oil https://www.etymonline.com/word/oil Coal is a piece of wood: https://www.etymonline.com/word/coal https://www.etymonline.com/word/coal Carbon is from coal: https://www.etymonline.com/word/carbon https://www.etymonline.com/word/carbon Effectively, the word fossil has done something of an orbit such that an attribute used to describe an object ("dug up" -> petrified remains of plants and animals) came to be ascribed to the word itself, such that "fossil fuels" comes to be popularly interpreted as "remains of ancient plants ... or animals" rather than "dug up fuels".
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoSinclair oil has a dinosaur logo.
- jameshart 5y agoIs Sinclair oil a famous brand? Where I grew up there was a lot of Shell oil petrol stations but I never got the impression oil came from crustaceans.
- DemocracyFTW 5y agoThat's because a shell isn't a crustacean, it's a mollusc.
- globular-toast 5y agoI'm wondering the same thing. I find it incredible that anyone thinks this, but I've never actually asked an adult (or child for that matter) where they think oil comes from. I might ask the girlfriend tomorrow.
- dredmorbius 5y agoI suspect it's a combination of advertising and marketing materials (e.g., educational videos, comic books), many produced by the oil industry itself, which promoted the meme. Sinclair Oil's mascot, dating to 1932, was a factor. I looked through Google Books with some date-ranged searches for "dinosaur" and "oil" or "petroleum". That excludes the video and comic-book evidence, but what seems to show up, even in congressional testimony, are references (mostly tongue-in-cheek) beginning in the 1970s. Given the archive's limited scope, I suspect that the concept could have been picking up in the 1960s or 1950s. Note that this corresponds largely with the widespread adoption of television, which goes in hand with simplified and infantalised messaging through both advertising and mainstream programming. But the notion was definitely "in the air" as of the early 1970s. Airplane II was released (or escaped) in 1982.