For anyone wondering (numbers in million years ago (mya))

• 538: cambrian explosion
• 419: sharks
• 385: tree ferns, horsetail trees & co. (also, Ginkgo)
• 245: conifers (lignin)
• 230: lignin decomposing
• 130: flowering plants (like, maple)
• 65: forests covering the globe
• 1.5 to recently: four glacial periods

Can blow some MFers mind when you tell them trees took Earth by surprise and were so new that they didn’t rot. Trees just fell over and stayed there forever, well … until they got turned into oil.

Maybe it feels counter-intuitive to some that sharks were there before trees…

But I hope it is intuitive that there was water long before there was soil? Then it’s just a small step to realize life in water has had a much longer time to develop.

Mosses were likely already there though

It’s such a shame that all of human knowledge isnt readily available to this person. Oh it is, on the very device he’s using to post this, how embarrassing

I knew someone who utterly refused to believe that dinosaurs weren’t the first organisms in existence. He literally thought it was dinosaurs, then there was an asteroid impact and then basically humans arrived about 10 minutes later.

People have absolutely no understanding of the immense amount of time that has existed before we came along.

Mind he also gave me that whole if earth was 1 cm closer to the sun, we would all burn up malarkey, so maybe he’s just an idiot.