this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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(page 2) 47 comments
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[–] [email protected] 140 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There are fossilized humans. Fossilization really doesn't take that much time, geologically speaking; it just requires very specific conditions.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (6 children)

About how much time are we talkin here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Your teeth can fossilise while they're still in your mouth. We call it tartar.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I know there's some animal fossils in New Zealand that date back to its colonization by the ancestors of the Maori, so about the 1400s. Though I don't know if they are partially or fully fossilized.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, there are human fossiles aswell and we have been here for a pretty short time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Speed running fucking it up too

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

So, technically there could be a paleantology dinosaur?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, just like there are archeologists digging human fossilized bones now.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This meme made me gasp loud enough that my girlfriend was worried something was wrong.

Then I had to explain that I'm 41 years old and was just shocked by a dinosaur fact.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Forty-one?! You're practically a fossil!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago

Also, my favourite fact is we know almost nothing about dinosaurs from jungles and mountains. Most of our knowledge comes from wetland and oceanic creatures because of the way fossils are formed.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

To be fair, things can fossilise very quickly given ideal conditions. Still dinosaurs reigned for a lot more time than mammals and frankly nature is still feeling the loss in certain ways.

https://www.americanforests.org/article/the-trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Another fun fact (dino facts are the best facts): There are more "dinosaur" species alive today than there are mammal species.
11,000 bird species alive today (approx)
6,000 mammal species alive today (approx)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Who is “they” and why do they have “all bats”? Also, what’s an all bat?

On a more serious note, I didn’t know most bird species were bats. That’s wild.

[–] [email protected] 120 points 2 days ago (6 children)

It is more chronologically accurate to show a t-rex being hit by a car than it is to show a t-rex eating a stegosaurus

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I don't remember that episode of the Flintstones

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Is it a self-driving car?

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I said I'm sorry. But if you're going to let your T-Rex out at night you should at least put a reflective collar on it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

The only interaction I've seen between a T-Rex and a collar is that one scene from The Lost World. Based on what I saw there, I have to assume that collars wouldn't really work for them.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hi, I was just calling because I live down the street from you, and your daughter come to my house today and she kick my t-rex.

Your daughter come to my house today, And she come on my property and then she kick my t-rex. And now my t-rex needs operation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

We don't know you

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How cruel.

My T-Rex ist mostly armless

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

That would be a knee slapper if I could reach.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago

This is the comparison I was looking for. It’s great to explain that media shows them together but untrue, it is a totally different idea to explain the staggering time difference between the two.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

Well, there are plenty of hominid fossils and we humans are plentiful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

[off topic]

The Gryphon's Skull is a fun read. Two Greek traders, circa 300 BC, discover a dinosaur fossil...

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gryphon-s-skull-harry-turtledove/8156325?ean=9781612421421&next=t

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

If you like fun but also well-researched stories about people living in pre-modern times, you might also enjoy the weird medieval guys podcast :) They actually did an episode on fossils recently. Another funny story they mention is the one of Johann Beringer's "Lying Stones".

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does getting buried in pumice count as becoming a fossil? Because Pompeii was only a couple thousand years ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

From wikipedia: A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. 'obtained by digging')[1] is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

Answer: yes. It does count. Specifically carbonization.

Personal take: when I think of a "fossil", I think of the stereotypical mineralized bones. Like the T-Rex in the museum of natural history that most people have seen from various movies and TV shows. Thinking of human and human predecessor bones as fossils is just weird to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Is Pompeii from a past geological age?

2000 years ago doesn't seem important on geological time scales.

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

This is only mind blowing because popular media likes to show every dinosaur at once. Like there's a lot of things depicting stegosaurus fighting T-Rex; but these animals never would have met. They're from entirely different periods.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

We live closer to the time of T-Rex than T-Rex lived to the time of Stegosaurus.

67 million years separate us from T-Rex.
83 million years separate T-Rex from Stegosaurus. (150 million years between us and Stegosaurus)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (4 children)

on a similar note: When cleopatra lived, the pyramids were already ancient

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Cleopatra lived closer to t-rex than us

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

You were born after cleopatra died 🫠🤑👻

Follow me for more Greece facts.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How dare you suggest DinoTrux lied to us!!!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

If gasoline is made from dinosaurs, what did the Dinotrux run on?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

DinoTrux drove the earth for such a long time BP Oil^®^ existed while DinoTrux drove the earth.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 days ago

The blood of their enemies!!!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago

You can tell because non of them has feathers.

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