Wow, sharks @439mya, Polaris @70mya. They're more than 6 times older! This is NUTS!
What's even crazier is sharks are even older than trees!
Interestingly, Sharks became a thing around the same time that massive fungi structures that looked like trees existed.
So there could be planets where mushroom forests are dominant like one might see in the science fiction televisual dramas.
Honestly, I disagree. It is much more surprising to me that lifeforms I recognize are older than stars. They're different timescales in my mind that I never even considered comparing.
And they're gonna go away because some wingnut convinced a bunch of people that their fins cause boners.
That and because they're considered a pest by fishing boats. Humans kill 100 Million Sharks a year, and we sure as heck aren't eating that many fins. If we did there would be a massive mercury epidemic causing infant deformity, dementia, organ failure, and loss of fertility.
That's not even 0.1% of the total fish we kill every year. Granted, that's just sheer numbers, not weight
Sharks hunt smaller predatory fish, which hunt for the same fish as humans. By killing sharks the fishermen are actually increasing their competition.
A family member once had to resort to traditional chinese medicine so solve an issue - and it acctually worked, I will admit upfront - but I kept hearing how shark cartilage capsules was the best to reinforce joints and one day I just snapped and replied along the lines of "by that same logic, to obtain insulin we should be grinding pig pancreas into pills for insulin".
we used to use cow pancreas to get insulin actually. fortunately bioreactors exist and some clever people figured out how to gmo bacteria to make insulin
And then you add the fact that sharks have barely evolved because they've been the perfect silent killer since the dawn of time.
Another fun fact:
Sharks don't make sound. They don't have any organ for the purpose of making sound. That is creepy as all hell.
That can't be true. I distinctly remember the shark in Jaws: The Revenge roaring. So get your facts straight.
And it always plays this ominous music when approaching their prey.
Sharks played the cello one billion years before the Big Bang occurred.
Just because they didn't change their appearance doesnt mean they did not evolve. It is somewhat misleading to say that, but conveys a point I guess.
More relevantly, the fossil records for sharks are mostly their teeth and jaws, because all their other bones are cartilage and rarely fossilize.
"Sharks haven't significantly evolved in appearance in 350 million years" is therefore based on reconstructions made under the assumption that the old sharks mostly looked like current sharks, which may or may not be true.
Though we can get a surprising amount of information that way, for example one change is that their jaws used be more at the end of their snout instead of more underslung like today, like so:
You'll note the Goblin Shark still has hints of that design.
I made sure to say barely instead of not at all, but you're right, there was certainly some evolution happening
Do any fish?
Yes, actually. Example: Triglidae
They are bottom-dwelling fish, living down to 200 m (660 ft), although they can be found in much shallower water. Most species are around 30 to 40 cm (12 to 16 in) in length. They have an unusually solid skull, and many species also possess armored plates on their bodies. Another distinctive feature is the presence of a "drumming muscle" that makes sounds by beating against the swim bladder
Wow, this is one of the most complicated Snopes analyses I've seen. But it seems like the statement is accurate with caveats. If the brightest component of Polaris is probably 50 million years old what was there before wasn't really Polaris. And then it doesn't make a difference whether sharks have been around for 450 million or 195 million years.
It is partly true. Polaris is in fact a triple star system. The youngest of the three stars (Polaris Aa) is indeed younger than sharks at between 45 and 67My old. It is in tight orbit with Polaris Ab which is 500My old, and Polaris B which is 1.5By old and a little bit farther away. Here’s a pic from Hubble:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polaris_alpha_ursae_minoris.jpg
I feel cheated that the north star is in fact 3 stars.
Me too. It’s a sick fact. Sharks are still older than trees tho…
This cannot be true.
Oh. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/respect-sharks-are-older-than-trees-3818/
This should not be true.
Happens a lot. Sometimes a "star" is actually a whole galaxy.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that Polaris Aa, the youngest star in the triplet, is also the brightest by 3 orders of magnitude. Without Polaris Aa, we wouldn’t actually consider it as the North Star at all…so I think you are safe to continue using this as a fact.
Go blow some people’s minds, everyone!
Fun fact: the morning Star (first star we see in the morning) is in fact also the evening star (first Star we see in the evening). It's also not a star; it's just Venus.
Sharks watching stars come and go: strange fireflies...
I always thought they were gigantic balls of gas burning millions of miles away
People forget that life on earth has been around for an extremely long time. We believe that single cellular life first appeared around 3.5 billion years ago. We also believe that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old. That means life has been around and evolving for around 25% of the time the universe has existed. Life operates on a scale far beyond our comprehension.
Another fun fact about life. We think that multicellular life only appeared around 600 million to 1.2 billion years ago. So life was probably single cellular for billions of years. The complexity of life has rapidly increased since then and will continue to do so.
Edit: new research suggests that complex multicellular life may have appeared around 2.4 billion years ago.
and will continue to do so.
Humans: hold my beer.
Even if humans manage to kill off most life on Earth it will continue to exist, propagate, and become more complex. Again we’re talking about billions of years. There have been huge shifts in climate and mass extinctions many times before and yet here we are.
True, it would be difficult to completely turn Earth into a lifeless rock, but I think humans are up to the task.
There are plenty of things we can't kill and, in fact, live on things we might use to kill them. Extremophiles that live in environments nothing else can. Bacteria that live off gamma radiation. We would have to dedicate ourselves to ridding all life on purpose to kill everything. We would have to live long enough to be the last things to kill if that was the goal.
Yeah I think most people don't know or comprehend that there have already been like 5 mass extinctions in our planets lifespan. It's going to take something like getting hit by 4 gamma ray bursts at the same time to completely wipe life off of planet earth.
Age 45 - 67 Myr. (Source: Wikipedia).
Holy shit, by a lot.
It’s just a widdle baby star.
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