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Dinosaur food: 100M year old foods we still eat today
- longemen3000 5y agojust to point out, the Araucaria Araucana gives "piñón" (a type of pine nut, but not the same). they can be made into flour or be eaten after boiling.
- bcherny 5y agoThanks! The article is open source, so feel free to submit a change directly: https://github.com/bcherny/bcherny.github.io/edit/main/_posts/2022-01-17-Dinosaur-food.md https://github.com/bcherny/bcherny.github.io/edit/main/_post...
- longemen3000 5y agoi just want to know, do they really use the name "monkey puzzle tree" in english speaking countries? i was a little surprised to see that name, given that araucaria is the accepted name for the tree (in spanish). If we dig deeper in the rabbit hole, araucaria is the name given to the tree (and the zone where the tree grows, and the indigenous (mapuche) people that inhabited, and keeps inhabiting the land) by the spanish empire. The original name (newen) was given by the mapuche people. "piñon" is also a mapuche word and while we use "araucaria" when refering to the tree, we use "piñón" instead of "araucaria nut". to refer to the edible part.
- mc32 5y agoApparently 'pinon' simply means "pine nut" in spanish. It makes sense as initially the plant was (mis)named pinus araucana.
- pezezin 5y agoSpanish is my mother language, I can confirm that is correct. Well, "piñón" can also mean pinion, as in gear systems, but the context should make the meaning clear. Likewise, "piña" can mean both pine cone and pineapple, due to their visual similarity.
- thomasfoster96 5y agoI’ve definitely heard Araucaria araucana called “monkey puzzle” quite often in English, and many people in Australia mistakenly call the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) “monkey puzzle” as well because they are closely related species and look fairly similar (I’m from Australia). There are several species of Araucaria in Australia though, so many people would also be aware of the Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla) and probably the hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii). I think some people who are familiar with the different species would probably understand that if you said “Araucaria” you would be probably be referring to Araucaria araucana.
- lbotos 5y agoMy Partner had a Monkey Puzzle tree (her description) in her backyard in London. Add me to the anecdote list :)
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoAnyone know where I can pick up some "monkey puzzle tree nuts" in the United States?
- bowmessage 5y agoNot trying to be facetious. but maybe look out for monkey puzzle trees in your area? If you're in the PNW, there a few around: https://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/usa-araucariaaraucana/ https://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/usa-araucariaaraucana/
- rootusrootus 5y agoApparently there are quite a few in the Portland area. Someone has been mapping them. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=142zMsWAyuf9uYKGu7tRRDXXuPmI&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&ll=45.574593814717744%2C-123.17622200000001&z=10 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=142zMsWAyuf9uYKGu7t...
- mixologic 5y agoI used to ride my bike around every late summer gathering them from people's lawns. The trees have sexes, so one has to find the female trees. There are quite a few in Portland, and all relatively the same age because they were given away at the lewis and Clark exposition of 1905 by a representative from Chile. https://slabtowntours.com/2016/04/19/fun-fact-26-the-seedlings-of-portlands-heritage-monkey-puzzle-trees-citywide-can-trace-their-origins-to-what-slabtown-event/ https://slabtowntours.com/2016/04/19/fun-fact-26-the-seedlin...
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y agoThey're found virtually everywhere in Florida.
- tjr225 5y agoThere are some massive examples in Seattle. They are hard to miss and very peculiar. I believe they are an import from the west coast of South America: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria_araucana
- cosmojg 5y ago> Note: I’m a hobbyist, and not a paleobotanist. Additions and edits are welcome, if I misclassified or missed anything. When does one cross the threshold from hobbyist to paleobotanist? Or from hobbyist to [insert research title]?
- oddlama 5y agoProbably when most other [insert reasearch title] would also classify you as a [insert reasearch title] instead of a hobbyist.
- krallja 5y agoWhen the PhD is conferred.
- lovich 5y agoProbably when you get paid to do work in the field
- user123456780 5y agoWhen there are consequences for you being wrong
- fbrchps 5y agoNot the wisdom I was expecting to find in this HN post, but it absolutely is the perfect description for when someone can be considered a "professional" of anything.
- guelo 5y agoSago palm and Cinnamon fern are toxic.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoWikipedia on the Sago Palm: "In metabolic conditions, cycasin is hydrolyzed into glucose and methylazoxymethanol (MAM), the latter of which dissociates into formaldehyde and diazomethane. Life finds a way to weaponize diazomethane. God help us all.
- bcherny 5y agoInterestingly, many of the plants on that list are toxic to some degree. Many take repeated boiling, or can only be eaten in small quantities (eg. Ginkgo). I mentioned Sacks in the article — he has a fascinating book on cycad toxicity: https://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/island-colorblind/ https://www.oliversacks.com/books-by-oliver-sacks/island-col...
- R0b0t1 5y agoI think it's fair to say most plants are toxic. The ones we eat as staples are the exception. Foods that you might want to use as a staple, like pine nuts and some beans, end up being toxic when consumed regularly, and anything left isn't really suitable as a main source of calories.
- addaon 5y agoNot a botanist, but fiddlehead ferns come to mind as a candidate.
- tejtm 5y agomaybe not the safest before we got fire and cooking some ferns have a carcinogen that can be denatured with enough heat
- bcherny 5y agoSeems like it's 55M years old, so on the younger end of the list. But it might take a bit more digging to confirm that. https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/fern/pteaqu/all.html#192 https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/fern/pteaqu/all.h... Please feel free to contribute! https://github.com/bcherny/bcherny.github.io/edit/main/_posts/2022-01-17-Dinosaur-food.md https://github.com/bcherny/bcherny.github.io/edit/main/_post...
- dools 5y agoTypo in “Horeshoe crab”
- bcherny 5y agoFixed, thanks! FWIW, the page is open source. PRs with corrections/contributions are welcome.
- wombatmobile 5y agoI’m a big fan of H2O. The reason I’m posting that here is because for many years I don’t drink it. I was so used to hydrating from soda and other beverages advertised on TV I completely lost touch with plain old H2O. Then one day I rediscovered its pure refreshing goodness. What a surprise! I savoured it and marvelled at the pureness of the way it quenched my thirst. Water! Quenching thirst since before the dinosaurs. Affordable. Convenient if you have a tap. Amazing on a hot day if you have a fridge and a pitcher.
- staticassertion 5y agoSomeone recently was exclaiming how good water was. We had been drinking heavily and I insisted they drank water while we were drinking alcohol since they were complaining about hangovers. They woke up with no hang over. It turns out they just don't really drink water. It's always something in a can - flavored seltzers or soft drinks. It kinda blew my mind that there are people out there who don't drink water. It feels as natural as breathing to me.
- WelcomeShorty 5y agoMy kids had friends (round 10 yo) who claimed they did not like the taste of water. That blew their minds since they'd been drinking water their whole life. It is still the main beverage we drink, and there are still those who never drink it. Incredible.
- mbg721 5y agoTo be fair, tap water in different places tastes different. If you're in a rural area of the US with well-water, what comes out of the faucet can have a strong rusty taste.
- quesera 5y agoExactly. As a kid, I thought I hated the taste of water. Our municipal tap water was terrible -- it was safe, but no one drank it because it was so unpleasant. On the other hand, NYC and SF both have excellent tap water. And other cities are somewhere in between, or at the extreme end can even be dangerous (Flint MI). The same is true of well water. Some of the best-tasting and perfectly safe water I've ever had has been well water. And as you mention, it can also come in all sorts of off-putting flavors. And it can be contaminated and dangerous (biologically or chemically). People talk a lot about the variations of coffee or wine or beer, but I think the variations in water are even more interesting (and sometimes contributive to the others).
- forgotmyoldacc 5y agoDoes anyone enjoy horseshoe crab? I've had it once, and there's very little edible meat. Seems more of a novelty than sustenance. (I may have been eating it incorrectly.)
- beambot 5y agoSuper-useful creature. "Horseshoe crab blood: The micracle vaccine ingredient that's saved millions of lives." https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-vaccine-ingredient.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-...
- Bellamy 5y agoDamn, this was interesting and depressing the same time.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoNot clicking on that. I recall seeing a picture of rows of hundreds of crabs strapped to harnesses, bent in half, with needles in their backs draining their blue blood. Still can't get it out of my head.
- cultofmetatron 5y agohad a friend in college who did that as his summer job. They take great care to make prevent them from dying but then they get sold to fishermen to be used as chum... go figure.
- pvg 5y agoIt's heavy on plants but plants seem like a trickier source for fossil foods since most plants we eat are domesticated and/or otherwise evolutionarily recent - we eat lots of grasses. Animals we catch might be a good source for new entries - sharks and sturgeons are ancient, hagfish are eaten. Maybe some of the edible seaweeds haven't changed much morphologically?
- dredmorbius 5y agoIt's pretty fascinating how recent most plant foods humans eat are. As you note, grasses (wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, ...) and maize are both recent developments and exceedingly selected and hybridised by humans. Both grasses and flowering plants post-date the first emergence of dinosaurs. Numerous other crops are similarly recent: stone fruits, pomes, etc. Others were available locally but not worldwide: potatoes and tomatoes. I suspect tubers and berries may be among the older plant foods eaten.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago> Both grasses and flowering plants Grasses are a type of flowering plant
- dredmorbius 5y agoPoint, though given the present significance of both the broader class of flowering plants, and the specific case of grasses, it's worth noting each individually.
- robbedpeter 5y agoSome sort of global disaster appears to have occurred around 12,000 years ago, with evidence of massive flooding and wildfires and dramatic shifts in climate happening over the course of days and weeks all over the world. Agriculture and advanced culture may have existed prior to the event, but it looks like the source for flood myths. Aside from Gobekli Tepe and a handful of other sites, it appears most knowledge and culture was lost. People had to start from scratch, so agriculture begins at most 12,000 years ago, comprising almost every plant we eat today. There's no way to know what might have been utterly lost. There's evidence of modern humans going back almost 300,000 years. (Crazy to think we were without dogs for ~260k years. Humans are better with dogs around. ) Humans probably invented language and writing and all sorts of proto-sciences many times over those hundreds of millenia, but everything before 12,000 years back is gone. There's virtually no evidence of the vast majority of human culture before then. Entropy sucks.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoso close darn it! https://www.preceden.com/timelines/68990-evolution-of-the-alligator https://www.preceden.com/timelines/68990-evolution-of-the-al...
- swiper_lux 5y agoI regularly eat bunya nuts from the Australian bunya or false monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria bidwillii). It is said to have appeared in the Jurassic (~200 - 145 mya). They are very tasty.
- bradrn 5y agoI’m surprised to hear this — living in Sydney, I don’t recall ever seeing any. Where do you find them? (There’s a smallish bunya-bunya near my house, but I don’t think I’ll try gathering nuts from there myself…)
- swiper_lux 5y agoI am up in Brisbane. I get them from my brother who has a few trees on his property in Maleny. I used to get them from the staff at Roma Street Parkland.
- bradrn 5y agoAh, interesting. In that case, if I want some, I guess I’ll just have to wait until I find a cone myself!
- Gustomaximus 5y agoI scrolled looking for these. I get a few every year at my place but tend to marvel at their size, eat a couple raw then throw them away. I've tried oven/fire roasting them like we do macadamias but wasnt too great. Any preparation you recommend? For people that dont know these, think pine cone thats a little bigger than a bowling ball. They are pretty amazing looking things. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-12/australian-native-bunya-nuts-great-camp-food-and-bush-tucker/9751602 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-12/australian-native-bun...
- swiper_lux 5y agoI leave the cone in a bowl until the individual seeds just start separating. Then I pull them off and put them on a tray and in the oven (~150 degrees) for 10 - 15 mins.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Zenst 5y agoI appreciate the caveat of "morphologically", otherwise chicken would of made that list, as would of the entire avian population. https://www.edenproject.com/learn/eden-at-home/a-guide-to-prehistoric-plants https://www.edenproject.com/learn/eden-at-home/a-guide-to-pr... has a nice list of plants of the era and "Black peppers" seems to be one that ticks the box's and not upon the list.
- bcherny 5y agoThanks! I can't find evidence that black pepper in particular is that old. I'm not sure what Eden Project is, but I can't find any references on the page you linked. Searching around a bit: [1] claims Myocene (5-20M years ago) [2] claims the genus is as old as the Upper Cretaceous (100M years ago), but I don't see the Piper Nigrum (black pepper) species in Table 1. So, it seems to be a bit more modern than some of the other plants in my post. Please correct me if I missed anything, or if you find a good source! 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790318307024?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10557... 2. https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.3732/ajb.1400427 https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.3732/ajb....
- irrational 5y agoDinosaur shaped chicken nuggets always get a chuckle out of me.
- Consultant32452 5y agoOnce we get Jurassic Park up and running we can get chicken shaped dinosaur nuggets.
- herodoturtle 5y agoKentucky Fried Theropods
- bigyellow 5y agoFunny we have to euphemise "nuggets" to suppress the true horrors and terrors of meat production. You're getting a chuckle because your brain is off.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoTurtles too.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoSago palms are poisonous. I do not know why they are listed as food. All parts of it are poisonous for both humans and animals.
- yissp 5y agothe starch can be extracted and is a common carbohydrate source in some parts of the world
- Avalaxy 5y agoMakes me wonder what dinosaurs taste like. And what other delicious plants they had back then.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- derekp7 5y agoMy guess is they taste like chicken. After all, birds evolved from dinosaurs, and things like frog legs taste like chicken.
- Symmetry 5y agoOstrich also evolved from the dinosaurs and has its own unique taste. I bet it varied though probably the range of bird meat tastes is a good place to put our first guesses.
- phonypc 5y agoNo need to wonder, just go sample some birds. More to the intent of the question, maybe the more reptilian, ancient ones tasted closer to crocodiles.
- forinti 5y agoAfter watching How to Grow a Planet, I thought about this same question. Considering flowers appeared to the end of the dinosaur era, there wouldn't be much to eat, except the dinosaurs themselves, and other animals (lots of sea food!). It's interesting to read about these other plants.
- culi 5y agoFlowers are necessary for fruit, but not for plants in general. Plants and algae and fungi existed long long before flowers evolved. You can still rely on leaves (spinach, lettuce, chard, etc), roots/tubers (yams, potatoes, carrots, etc), stems (celery, asparagus, bamboo, etc), and many other parts. Not to mention the majority of lichen are edible and the many many edible mushroom species. Also edible algae and seaweeds
- forinti 5y agoYes, but Dicotyledons are pretty important in our current diet.
- pvaldes 5y agosharks oh, and Tarantula spiders also.
- nsxwolf 5y agoInteresting that the common name of Ginkgo biloba is supposedly "Maidenhair nuts". I prefer "Ginkgo biloba".
- culi 5y agoOne interesting thing that might be hard to fit into here is the vast vast variety of "spring greens" different human cultures have eaten for a really long time that have since been forgotten about. Spring is a time of a lot of growth, and young plant growth tends to be the least likely to have bitter or toxic compounds so there are a ton of plants that were munched on in the springtime and only then. Some of them, like spinach or many brassicas, were then domesticated, but many of them remained wild. My parents grew up in Romania and had many plants they would munch on as kids while outside. And it seems to have been thought of as "kids food" since they weren't really collected in large quantities to make meals. A lot of these forgotten edibles are often rediscovered in times of economic failures. If you pick up any foraging book today, a ton of that knowledge can be traced back to the Great Depression when people had to rediscover what foods they can rely on