Ancient termite poo reveals 120M-year-old secrets of Australia's forests
phys.org

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22 points

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janandonly

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15 days ago

8 comments

yalogin ・ 12 days ago

This is completely unexpected. It says back then nighttime lasted for 3 months and daytime for another three months. How is this possible? Did the orientation of the earth relative to the sun change over time? If so it’s going to flip over again, wonder what the time estimates for that are

  • lovich ・ 12 days ago

    Australia was at a different place on the globe back then, much closer to the South Pole, which experiences extreme day/night cycles because of geometry

    I kinda recall reading that the planet was warmer back then so it’s not crazy to think life evolved there and dealt with the cycles.

  • magneticnorth ・ 12 days ago

    Longyearban, the capital of Svalbard, has 4 months of night and 4 months of day.

    I believe Earth has always had some axial tilt, so this kind of effect would always have happened near the poles. According the article, "During the Early Cretaceous, southeastern Australia was some of the closest land to the South Pole."

Razengan ・ 12 days ago

Wonder what secrets my poo will reveal 120 million years in the future

  • lovich ・ 12 days ago

    If paleontologists in 120 millions years could correlate a bunch of corporolites(fossilized shit) and yours was among them, you quite literally would be revealing a lot of data around the type of food your species ate but also what plant life was available at the time

    • Razengan ・ 11 days ago

      But like, if, 120 million years from now, there is no life that has an analogue to poop, would they be able to guess that the coprolites they discovered were the waste products of a lifeform? Why couldn't it just be the remains of the body parts of ancient life?

      Like what if oil/petroleum is actually the poop of ancient lifeforms, but we assume it's the remains of the lifeforms themselves.