this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Science Memes

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On trees... (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Also cool that for a period of like 60 million years, nothing decomposed dead trees. As they would die or fall over, they'd just stay there, piling up. This is where most oil came from. The massive amounts of trees stacking up before bacteria and fungus evolved to decomposed them. Imagine 60 million years worth of trees just lying around.

*Thought I'd add an edit, since this post got quite a few eyes on it: It was mostly coal that all those trees turned into. Not oil.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Didn't those trees become coal, not oil?

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

Yes. I made mention of this in a reply to someone else as well. I'm not sure if my teacher (like 30 years ago) told us wrong or if I simply remembered it wrong.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think near water they became oil and far from water they became coal

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, most coal comes from plants in swamps, because the water helped preserve the organic matter.

Plants in swamps die -> organic matter on the bottom of the swamp -> peat -> brown coal -> black coal.

Oil apparently comes mostly from plankton.

On the different origins: https://www.carboeurope.org/how-are-fossil-fuels-formed-the-science-behind-oil-coal-and-natural-gas/

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

Oil was effectively plankton and other sea stuff.

Coal was forests.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Brother I finally found you.

We come from the same place you and me. Remember that barn?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Mushrooms are the great undertaker, the great decomposer. The Langoliers. They are just waiting to eat you, and they're happy to share their fruits in the meantime. They're fattening you up. They can wait.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

That Langoliers reference spotted in the wild!

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

Now we do the dance of joy!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I remember a flimsy tv film with even flimsier CGI spherical creatures eating the planet

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

I was struggling to explain the plot of this one to my gf just the other day. Had to pull out screenshots of the TV movie to make it make sense.

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

I imagine dead trees were flammable, even back then. And oxygen levels were 15% higher. Can you imagine the forest fires?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fire wasn't invented back then

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

And after it was invented, it was only in black and white until the 1950s

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

I thought that was coal

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I love this fact, and am curious where you learned it?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I learned it nearly 30 years ago in school. I just did a search and found a link about it, though.

Also, seems that either I remembered wrongly, or my teacher made a mistake, but it seems it was most of the worlds coal; not oil, that came from all the piles of trees from that period.

https://www.thorogood.co.uk/treevolution-how-trees-came-first-and-rot-came-later-in-earths-deep-past/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Correct. In theory, we could make more oil in the lab. We cannot make more coal, because the wood will get broken down by bacteria far before it turns to peat, lignite, sub-bituminous, or bituminous coal, and much less anthracite.