Fossils on Fossils

There are fossilized humans. Fossilization really doesn't take that much time, geologically speaking; it just requires very specific conditions.
- About how much time are we talkin here?
  
  Where are the bodies?
  
  I know there's some animal fossils in New Zealand that date back to its colonization by the ancestors of the Maori, so about the 1400s. Though I don't know if they are partially or fully fossilized.
  
  Human species before H. Sapiens
  
  Your teeth can fossilise while they're still in your mouth. We call it tartar.
- Also makes you wonder what fossils they mean, of the same species or then already extinct ones.
  Because according to a quick Wikipedia search the oldest hominid fossils (?) are something like 7 millions years old
  That's much much shorter than dinosaurs where around but hey " hominins are around long enough to unearth hominin fossils"!

It is more chronologically accurate to show a t-rex being hit by a car than it is to show a t-rex eating a stegosaurus
- I said I'm sorry. But if you're going to let your T-Rex out at night you should at least put a reflective collar on it.
  
  Hi, I was just calling because I live down the street from you, and your daughter come to my house today and she kick my t-rex.
  Your daughter come to my house today, And she come on my property and then she kick my t-rex. And now my t-rex needs operation.
  
  The only interaction I've seen between a T-Rex and a collar is that one scene from The Lost World. Based on what I saw there, I have to assume that collars wouldn't really work for them.
- This is the comparison I was looking for. It’s great to explain that media shows them together but untrue, it is a totally different idea to explain the staggering time difference between the two.
- You made me scroll up to the picture again, looking for a T-Rex or a car
- And people mocked me for my human-tyrannosaur slashfic on ao3. Well, who's laughing now?
- I don't remember that episode of the Flintstones
- Is it a self-driving car?

This is only mind blowing because popular media likes to show every dinosaur at once. Like there's a lot of things depicting stegosaurus fighting T-Rex; but these animals never would have met. They're from entirely different periods.
- How dare you suggest DinoTrux lied to us!!!
  
  If gasoline is made from dinosaurs, what did the Dinotrux run on?
  
  You can tell because non of them has feathers.
- We live closer to the time of T-Rex than T-Rex lived to the time of Stegosaurus.
  67 million years separate us from T-Rex.
  83 million years separate T-Rex from Stegosaurus. (150 million years between us and Stegosaurus)
  
  on a similar note: When cleopatra lived, the pyramids were already ancient
  
  Wtf 🤯

This meme made me gasp loud enough that my girlfriend was worried something was wrong.
Then I had to explain that I'm 41 years old and was just shocked by a dinosaur fact.
- To be fair, things can fossilise very quickly given ideal conditions. Still dinosaurs reigned for a lot more time than mammals and frankly nature is still feeling the loss in certain ways.
  https://www.americanforests.org/article/the-trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/
  
  Another fun fact (dino facts are the best facts): There are more "dinosaur" species alive today than there are mammal species.
  11,000 bird species alive today (approx)
  6,000 mammal species alive today (approx)
- Also, my favourite fact is we know almost nothing about dinosaurs from jungles and mountains. Most of our knowledge comes from wetland and oceanic creatures because of the way fossils are formed.
- Forty-one?! You're practically a fossil!

https://xkcd.com/1211/
- There's always a relevant xkcd
- The popup text on that one is quite funny.
  
  Any idea how to access the pop-up text on a phone?

Birds are considered to be dinosaurs. Birds exist now. We are finding dinosaur fossils now.
- That's what the XKCD that was posted says. Mostly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
- Does getting buried in pumice count as becoming a fossil? Because Pompeii was only a couple thousand years ago.
  
  From wikipedia: A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. 'obtained by digging')[1] is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.
  Answer: yes. It does count. Specifically carbonization.
  Personal take: when I think of a "fossil", I think of the stereotypical mineralized bones. Like the T-Rex in the museum of natural history that most people have seen from various movies and TV shows. Thinking of human and human predecessor bones as fossils is just weird to me.

Also, water you are drinking has probably been peed by dinosaure. Several time. But probably not peed by a human.
- guzzles water
- Second relevant xkcd of the comments https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/

Well, there are human fossiles aswell and we have been here for a pretty short time.
- Speed running fucking it up too

Well, there are plenty of hominid fossils and we humans are plentiful.

Which makes me ask, why were mammals able to evolve to produce an apex predator that relies on it's inventiveness (Humans) in quite a short time, but no similar "dinosaur" got to that point in a much longer period?
We're searching planets for signs of life as a pre-cursor to intelligent life, but there's no guarantee that life will evolve in the same direction as ours.
- Corvids and psittacines display human child level intelligence. They use tools. They recognize other people. Hell the psittacines can mimic speech.
  I personally suspect it's a matter of energy density. Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying. Doesn't leave a lot of energy left over for a massively hungry brain. No clue what's holding back penguins, emus, and cassowaries.
  
  Most birds are extremely light and efficient. Their bones have evolved to be light weight to help with this. Some species even fly in a V formation to conserve energy.
  Evolution doesn't mean get better or smarter. It just means the species can survive and keep reproducing. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica for example, where they nest in a place where there are no predators. It seems insane the hardship and their silly walk which takes forever. But it works.
  
  Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying.
  But flying is quite energy efficient as a method of getting from point A to point B. That's why flying insects and birds have had such evolutionary success with that strategy.
- Evolution isn't aimed. A T-Rex needs to be good enough to hunt enough food.
  Our ancient ancestors smashed the skulls of animals killed by African predators to eat the brains, smashed bones to eat the marrow.
  Later as our ancestors became bigger and stronger they hunted and needed to communicate with each other to effectively track and take down an animal. Maybe they needed twenty words. Chickens have three words (or cluck patterns)
  At the same time women collected stuff and needed to share how to identify this from that with younger women. They might have needed a hundred words.
  Then those who could talk better were more attractive to the other sex than those who couldn't (even now being well spoken is attractive) then a few millions of years later we're making stone knives, hammers, axes; then ten minutes later aeroplanes and machine guns
  In short: we had it hard enough we needed to share information. We later found communication sexy. T-Rex had no such trouble. We seem to be the only animal that solved "scavenging is dangerous" and "hunting is hard" with talking to each other rather than by getting bigger and getting claws or vicious teeth
  I understand we selected for tall by fighting humans
  
  Evolution isn't aimed.
  I realise that, but the use of tools and sharing of ideas may well have had advantages against the T-Rex. Just as I'm sure they've helped us against things that would eat or kill us.
  We seem to be the only animal that solved "scavenging is dangerous" and "hunting is hard" with talking to each other rather than by getting bigger and getting claws or vicious teeth
  Right, but why are we the only ones to solve it that way? Some lesser "dinosaur" could have evolved tactics to fight bigger predators through basic weapons (sharp sticks), but no evidence of that exists.
  An advantage is an advantage, so I think it's reasonable to ask why mammals and not murder chickens came up with it.
  
  Weird to leave at animals like crows with that last one.
- Now you get it. :)
- The difference is that they decided not to be parasitic narcissistic global suicide "apex" who gave no fucks, literally, about our will-no-longer-exist "children."
  You're so narcissistic you will refuse to admit that they weren't stupid. The very way you will chose to be exactly that by denying the obvious as I lay it out so blatantly that your ego cries and denies ad infinitum.
  Edit: Yeah and it's okay. Those downvotes will save anyone's life on this planet. Adiós!

"Hey, isn't that Dave's skull?"
"Can't be, I just saw him this morning. Sure looks like him though. Weird."

I suddenly feel very small, but also the load off my shoulders lifted.

OK, now I'm imagining dinosaur archaeologists (monocles and brushes, not bullwhips and quips).

[off topic]
The Gryphon's Skull is a fun read. Two Greek traders, circa 300 BC, discover a dinosaur fossil...
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gryphon-s-skull-harry-turtledove/8156325?ean=9781612421421&next=t
- If you like fun but also well-researched stories about people living in pre-modern times, you might also enjoy the weird medieval guys podcast :) They actually did an episode on fossils recently. Another funny story they mention is the one of Johann Beringer's "Lying Stones".

There are still a few of them in government.

So, technically there could be a paleantology dinosaur?
- Yes, just like there are archeologists digging human fossilized bones now.
- Paleosaurus (that's a real word)