this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Science Memes

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On trees... (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 day ago* (last edited 9 hours 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] 16 points 12 hours ago

I thought that was coal

[–] [email protected] 22 points 14 hours 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] 2 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

That Langoliers reference spotted in the wild!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 minutes ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Now we do the dance of joy!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 15 hours 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] 14 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Fire wasn't invented back then

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 37 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Didn't those trees become coal, not oil?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours 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] 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 21 hours 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] 19 points 21 hours ago

Oil was effectively plankton and other sea stuff.

Coal was forests.

[–] ravenaspiring 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 34 points 23 hours 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] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours 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.