@hugo Wait, sharks are older than trees? That is seriously cool.

@hugo Sharks being older than trees always blows my mind. What did the first shark to see a downed log floating in the water do? Try to bite it, and get very confused?

@hugo Holy shit.

@hugo Seen several sharks. Smallest was a pale Yellow 3’ Sand shark in a tide pool. Picked it up and carried to the water. Normal were 5-6’ Blue sharks also in sight of NYC. Largest was a 65’+ Black Nurse shark about 6-700 miles East of Miami, on a New York to Virgin Gorda passage. Chance, under sail in light winds within 100 yards before it submerged. It was almost as the big as the ship.

@hugo

Yeah but what about Keith Richards?

@hugo you watched The Meg didn't you? 😉

@hugo Sharks are just some of those ancient inhabitants of our misnamed planet: "Water."

Brings to mind "The Magic of Reality" by Dawkins. It has a nice part where he shows a hugely long list of photos starting with our own, then our father or mother, one of our grandparents, and so forth for one of our ancestors in each of our previous generations. If we could go back far enough, as in a few million years, the photo would show us.. not even a mammal but a fish!

@hugo which means that sharks, like dinosaurs, lived on the other side of our galaxy.

@hugo dragonflies are similarly old, around 300 million years. They don’t beat sharks, but they do beat most of your list too!

@hugo Sharks are THREE TIMES AS OLD as the Atlantic Ocean???!?

🤯🤯🤯

@hugo That's a neat comparison. Something related to think about: the shark lineage and the "all other vertebrates" lineage diverged 420 MYA. Why did one of those two lineages diversify morphologically so much more than the other? The two lineages are equal in age, but not equal in morphological diversity.

@hugo ‘sharks are older than the ocean’ would make a good bumper sticker.

@hugo @nyrath

The age of Saturn's rings is argued about; as is how long they will persist.

They could be as old as a few hundred million years.

But probably still not as old as sharks.

@hugo Sharks have been around the galaxy twice.

@hugo Yes. But they were quite different to modern sharks.

@hugo how are sharks older than trees wtf 😐

@hugo And the Greenland Shark is estimated to live 250 to 500 years old. Fascinating animals.

@hugo Seems like Lovecraft should’ve chosen a shark template for his Great Old One Cthulhu, given that sharks predate octopuses.

@hugo "What do you mean by environmental morphological optimisation?" by $500, Mr. Trebek.

@hugo I just learnt today that they're older than trees because I was visiting relatives and their children were watching a TV Contest in which they asked which were older. Nobody, not the contestants and not us, but my partner got it right. I'm still kind of astonished.

@hugo Sharks are also older than Land animals (428 myo). Geologically that is right after sharks appeared, so I shall jump to the conclusion that it's not co-incidental - sharks appeared and some animals decided it's time to start evolving lungs ;-)

@hugo https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/greenland-shark.html

This blows my mind too. Imagining some sharks still swimming around who were out there circa the King James Bible.

@hugo Saturn's rings are newer than the trees? o.o

@hugo So, um, we’re gonna need a bigger calendar?

@hugo Just wait til you hear about jellyfish… 🪼

@hugo *rolls eyes in horseshoe crab* :horseshoe_crab: :P

@hugo finally some internet facts that make me feel young. Thanks!

@hugo I got in a Thanksgiving argument with the “sharks are older than the North Star” fact.

@hugo @siracusa

@hugo I don’t think there’s quite consensus on this one yet, but the current leading theory about the age of the inner solid iron core of the earth says it’s about 500 million years old. So just “a bit” older than sharks, apparently.

@hugo Also Keith Richards (~80 myo)

@hugo Sharks predate trees? Wow. What did they eat before surfboards?

@hugo

Trees are older than flowers and even older than wood rot.
Now you mention sharks are older than trees.
Isn't wood from trees that got buried before wood rot what became fossil fuels?

Maybe since sharks are way older than fossil fuels they are a better mascot for the Green movement than trees and flowers.

@hugo Wow. At that age you’d think they’d have more wrinkles. Guess the ocean is really moisturising.

@hugo for a fun additional reference, jellyfish have been around for 500 million years

@hugo It sure is mind boggling. Did you know horseshoe crabs are very old also? As a species I mean.
About as old as sharks, I think, and without having changed much, if any at all, in those hundreds of millions of years.

@hugo not too bad for a nearly boneless notochord.

@hugo @sc_griffith Dinosaurs are another famously ancient thing, and the earliest ones didn’t evolve until ~240 mya. And they wouldn’t have been the enormous and recognizable ones—the very first dinosaurs and the common ancestor of all later dinosaur clades likely were terrier-sized.

@hugo All that time to work with and they haven't invented a single dang thing. Sharks are such slackers.

@hugo And the widespread irrational fear of them is so unwarranted and frustrating. They’re just the coolest animals!

@hugo holy fucking mother of pearl that is some SERIOUSLY HAR OUT FACTS bro. thank you. 🤌🤌🤌💯

there is one individual shark who lives around Iceland who is older than the United States. I think about that a lot.

@hugo The time scales are incomprehensibly amazing.

As a side note, what bothers me about ”group X has existed for Y million years”, is that in evolutionary terms (”tree of life”) every single species living today had ancestors Y million years ago. Whether we call ancestors of currently living sharks ”sharks”, or the ancestors of currently living ostriches ”ostriches” (instead of dinosaurs), is just a matter of choice that has only little to do with the animals themselves.

@hugo

Want chills? Almost all the features we see in The Moon are older than sharks.

Highlands (Bright Areas): date back approximately 4.5 billion years. They formed during the moon's early history, mostly through the impact of meteorites.

Maria (Dark Areas): formed between 3 and 4 billion years ago due to volcanic activity.

Craters: Some of the large, well-preserved craters, such as Copernicus and Tycho, are estimated to be around 800 million to 1.1 billion years old.

@hugo Sharks are older than trees. SHARKS ARE OLDER THAN TREES. What the fuck.

@hugo 👆 @haialarm

@hugo
I am guessing that by sharks you mean the ancestors of modern day sharks?