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Gondwanaland: The search for a land before (human) time
- andrekandre 2y agothis is a cool app [1] i found to visualize the contents drifting (among other things) over millenia; its pretty cool [1] https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/earthviewer https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/earthview...
- pjbk 2y agohttps://archive.is/ewwb1 https://archive.is/ewwb1
- profsummergig 2y agoI find geology's power fascinating. A person was once able to surmise from geological features that India was once part of Africa. (He was resoundingly mocked of course.)
- pfdietz 2y agoAlso, from the distribution of lemurs. Before plate tectonics this lead to the idea of the sunken continent of Lemuria, which has since migrated into weird science fantasy stories.
- kopirgan 2y agoIt is fascinating once we consider how little, both of technology and mobility scientists had in the past. To verify some little fact they had to wait months, years.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoI am an enthusiastic amateur rock botherer, what got me hooked was wondering why mountains on why one side of our island are far more rugged, and the river gorges far harder to traverse, than the other. Turns out that's what happens when on either sides of a subducting plate boundary. What I love though, is that the fault that marks the boundary, was initially discovered by someone mapping natural hot springs and noticed they formed a rough line trending SW - NE.
- profsummergig 2y agoI attended a talk by a geology professor about features in my area. Mind completely blown. My area was once under the ocean. And the rocks I see in my regular walks bear clear evidence of having been in contact with water long-term. Another mind blowing thing: if one digs 10 feet in my area, one hits a bed of limestone. And limestone is constructed from the skeletons of past marine life. And marble is compressed limestone. It just goes on and on. Simply mind-blowing field of study.
- buildsjets 2y agoPolygondwanaland. It’s full of dinosaurs.
- LambdaComplex 2y agoAnd there's men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.
- Vox_Leone 2y agoThe Global North, and South, which includes developing nations primarily in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia and Oceania. What's mildly interesting is that this division mirrors, in a surprising way, the ancient separation of Gondwana and Laurasia. The countries of the Global North largely reside in regions that were once part of Laurasia, while much of the Global South [including India] resides in areas that were part of Gondwana.
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- ImPostingOnHN 2y agoWouldn't it make sense for areas which were once geographically proximate to each other (Gondwana areas / Laurasia areas) to continue being geographically proximate to each other (continue being ≈ north of equator / south of equator)?
- Vox_Leone 2y agoI was talking about India's case, which is quite peculiar.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kopirgan 2y agoIndia is unique case of a bit from the south that moved at high speed, smashed into the north, creating Himalayas. My son went trekking there came back with a stony fossil of some deep sea creature thousands of miles from ocean today!
- goatlover 2y agoMakes one wonder how human history would have played out on a different geography from the past. Say we evolved on a super continent with no oceans in between, just one big one around the connected landmass.
- shiroiushi 2y agoIt would have been completely different: geography has been an enormous factor in human history and culture. Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" book makes the case that the main reason for Europe's historical success as a seat of civilization over other places is mainly due to geography: stable, warm-enough (but not too warm) climate with a very large amount of arable land for farming.
- MrVandemar 2y agoCompletely different, but probably still full of the same basic wars, bigotry, tribalism, brutality and all the other shining facets of our basic human nature.
- shiroiushi 2y agoMaybe, maybe not. Human history has been drastically shaped by geography, causing humans to leave wherever they first evolved and travel across the world, becoming by far the dominant species. Perhaps with different geography, humans would have gone extinct long before figuring out how to make fire or the wheel.
- Y_Y 2y agoI was wondering how difficult it might be to modify Earth's geography to ensure humans went extinct, while still having them evolve in the first place. I think the answer is barely, if at all. Using the power of known population bottlenecks (e g. [0]) and chaotic dynamics we can say that any trivial change might lead to a brief existence for humanity. Specifically I'm thinking of something like Lotka-Volterra leading to Gambler's Ruin. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...
- kopirgan 2y agoOzs don't need to feel so isolated. Their continent is moving north towards China & will one day ram into it.
- inshard 2y agoWould humans be able to live on earth 400m years ago if we time travelled back to Gondwanaland, considering the 7x CO2 and hot tropical climate?
- yzydserd 2y agoYes, sure. Just imagine being somewhere 5-10C warmer and a few hundred metres higher in elevation than where you are now.
- inshard 2y agoI do see significant change from our current dependence on fossil fuels, but for argument’s sake, what’s the best case scenario for global warming and climate change? Could we create a super verdant earth epoch? What probability do our most advanced climate models have for such an outcome? And what’s the economic cost of moving coastal populations and those in high risk zones to new cities designed from ground up using the latest thinking in urban planning? What’s the cost benefit from high one off relocation costs to long term gains from smarter cities?
- yzydserd 2y agoI don’t know what the best case scenario is. Perhaps it is simply to avoid the likely case scenarios. As I see it, the great risk of temperature increases such as this would be the collapse of food chains that we ultimately rely upon.
- inshard 2y agoIs there an equation for human food chain adaptability speed vs climate influenced food chain change rate. I’m thinking if we could adapt and harness new food chains faster than climate disrupts the old chains, we come on top. We need to assume food generation capacity independent of human intervention remain constant in current and future states. I think it’s fair as long as terrestrial food chain benefit from higher CO2 and expansion of temperate zones further north, while conceding some southern temperate zones to equatorial conditions. This is all speculation. But I feel we are discounting speed of adaptation of current human civilization.
- femto 2y ago> “These rainforests were historically neglected by tourists and walkers in favour of supposedly more ‘Australian’ eucalypt forests,” I don't think that's correct. Lamington National Park, one of the mentioned rainforests, was gazetted in 1915 and has long been a mecca for walkers, tourists and bird watchers. The O’Reilly and Binna Burra guest houses have been there for almost 100 years. https://parks.desi.qld.gov.au/parks/lamington/about/centenary https://parks.desi.qld.gov.au/parks/lamington/about/centenar...
- dogmatism 2y agoThought this might be about Fastmail's Bron Gondwana
- brongondwana 2y agoMe too! My parents thought it was a cool word, so they named me after it. There's 5 of us, and we all have different surnames. Hippy parents, man.
- dboreham 2y agoSame first name presumably, JANET style?
- brongondwana 2y agoSadly, they weren't quite prescient enough to realise the importance of different initials, so we have to use TWO letters for card game scoresheets; but nah. Pity.
- EdwardDiego 2y agoWait, your name is literally Bron Gondwana? That must be a hell of a conversation starter. I'd definitely bore you with tree talk though.
- brongondwana 2y agoLegitimately is, it's been a challenge at time but pretty happy with it. Pity LeBron came along and stole my googlability
- EdwardDiego 2y agoWelp, if you're ever in NZ and want to discuss the saltiness of the scientist who named southern beech "fake beech" (Nothofagus), I'm always keen :D
- teleforce 2y agoFun facts, we can still see the animals in their original preserved form from Gondwana era millions years ago inside amber [1],[2]. [1] Australian amber has revealed ‘living fossils’ traced back to Gondwana 42 million years ago: https://theconversation.com/australian-amber-has-revealed-living-fossils-traced-back-to-gondwana-42-million-years-ago-232990 https://theconversation.com/australian-amber-has-revealed-li... [2] Lebanese amber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_amber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_amber
- timeninja 2y ago"Gondwana": land of the Gonds "Gondwanaland": land of the Gonds land
- optimalsolver 2y agoDo they have an ATM machine there?
- inglor_cz 2y agoNo, but they were prolific producents of compact CD disks.