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Sharks Rule, Rule (slrpnk.net)

I actually fact checked this and it's true.

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[-] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 115 points 1 year ago

Wow, sharks @439mya, Polaris @70mya. They're more than 6 times older! This is NUTS!

[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 19 points 1 year ago

What's even crazier is sharks are even older than trees!

[-] sosodev@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago
[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago

So there could be planets where mushroom forests are dominant like one might see in the science fiction televisual dramas.

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[-] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] aelwero@lemmy.world 101 points 1 year ago

And they're gonna go away because some wingnut convinced a bunch of people that their fins cause boners.

[-] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 30 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

That's not even 0.1% of the total fish we kill every year. Granted, that's just sheer numbers, not weight

[-] tryptaminev@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Sharks hunt smaller predatory fish, which hunt for the same fish as humans. By killing sharks the fishermen are actually increasing their competition.

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[-] qyron@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago

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".

[-] aluminiumsandworm@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago

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

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[-] miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml 96 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Hamartia@lemmy.world 55 points 1 year ago

That can't be true. I distinctly remember the shark in Jaws: The Revenge roaring. So get your facts straight.

[-] derpgon@programming.dev 33 points 1 year ago

And it always plays this ominous music when approaching their prey.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Sharks played the cello one billion years before the Big Bang occurred.

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[-] Gladaed@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 18 points 1 year ago

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:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-technologies-reveal-strange-jaws-prehistoric-sharks-180977396

You'll note the Goblin Shark still has hints of that design.

[-] miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

I made sure to say barely instead of not at all, but you're right, there was certainly some evolution happening

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[-] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago
[-] gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 year ago

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

[-] hallettj@beehaw.org 38 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca 45 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 32 points 1 year ago

I feel cheated that the north star is in fact 3 stars.

[-] DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago

Me too. It’s a sick fact. Sharks are still older than trees tho…

[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Happens a lot. Sometimes a "star" is actually a whole galaxy.

[-] DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

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!

[-] stockRot@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

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.

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Sharks watching stars come and go: strange fireflies...

[-] shasta@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago

I always thought they were gigantic balls of gas burning millions of miles away

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[-] sosodev@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] samus12345@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

and will continue to do so.

Humans: hold my beer.

[-] sosodev@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] samus12345@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

True, it would be difficult to completely turn Earth into a lifeless rock, but I think humans are up to the task.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] ComradePorkRoll@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Age 45 - 67 Myr. (Source: Wikipedia).

Holy shit, by a lot.

[-] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago
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[-] famousringo@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

It’s just a widdle baby star.

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this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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