this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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todayilearned

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Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, although fossilized soils are preserved from as far back as the Archean.

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[–] stratusfear 12 points 4 months ago

This is incorrect. Very little of the soil that existed before the Cenozoic has been preserved. There was soil. The wikipedia article you linked states this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It did, just no soil that exists today is older that the Cenozoic period. The same Wiki says there are fossilized soil samples from as far back as the Archean period.

[–] ccunning 5 points 4 months ago

I wasn’t sure I agreed with your reading, so I went to go read the source sited for the claim and the entire domain hosting it has been seized by the FBI 😅

[–] FlyingSquid 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If I recall correctly, trees evolved before fungi, so for a while, there were just dead trees everywhere, not decomposing.

[–] Death_Equity 5 points 4 months ago

Correct, plants evolved lignin and nothing could eat lignin until fungi figured out how to process it after 30 million years of trying their best. Trees still eroded away due to environmental conditions, but it took considerably longer than today so they would get covered in leaves and whatnot and eventually became coal.

[–] ivanafterall 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

TIL the mass extinction event created the entire pedosphere.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

And QAnon has been trying to stop it ever since

[–] CrayonRosary 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fix your clearly wrong title or delete this.

[–] ccunning 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Editing the title’s not really fair for those who replied with correct information.

Delete feels like a cover up.

I think it’s pretty clear from the votes and comments what happened.

If mods want to remove it, it doesn’t bother me at all.

[–] CrayonRosary 2 points 4 months ago

That's an awfully rigid way of thinking. The people who corrected you can also revise or delete their comments. There are like 2 of them. There's absolutely no shame in editing a title or deleting an incorrect post.

Lot's of people only read titles as they scroll, and you're dong those people a disservice. Just fix your post.