The Tree of Life: Solving Science’s Greatest Puzzle - Max Telford Audiobook

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• 
  apnea
  November 22nd, 2025
  

  

  Thank you, MojoYugen.

  Biology scientists dropped the ‘Tree of Life’ and have been calling it “The Web of Life” for the last couple of decades. What gives? I guess it don’t matter since humans have militated and radically impoverished it and we ain’t done yet. Cancer keeps going until it kills the very host that feeds it.

  Out of all the articles on our Fing up the natural world this one is my fave.
  .
  *Plastic rocks, plutonium, and chicken bones: the markers we’re laying down in deep time*
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  “Let’s say you’re in the far future and you’re looking for evidence of previous civilisations. Where would you look? The first place would be in the rocks.

  For decades, experts have debated whether our world-spanning impact on the planet represents the sign of a new geological period, the Anthropocene. Only recently, scientists selected a small lake in Canada as the site that best records our impact.

  That’s because the waters of the lake don’t mix, which means sediment falling into the lake is laid down neatly and in incredible detail. Over long periods, the lake’s varved sediments have preserved an excellent, undisturbed record of the Anthropocene.

  But what would have to be in those sediments to leave indelible evidence of our presence? Here are five of the markers we’re leaving for the future.”

  So to declare that we’re in a new geological epoch – and that we’ve left the balmy post-ice age Holocene behind – requires finding evidence of unmistakably clear markers. Here are five possibilities.
  1. Plastics and plastic rocks

  Plastics aren’t naturally produced – they’re manufactured from feedstock such as oil, coal, cellulose and fossil gas. Finding plastics in a sediment or rock layer is a clear sign that the layer dates from modern times.

  There are also plastiglomerates, the mutant offspring of plastics and rock. These have been found in several places worldwide. They can be produced when plastic is heated, such as in campfires, or in bushfires. But they’re also being found in other places such as creeks.
  2. Concrete

  Concrete is now the most abundant human-made “rock” on the planet’s surface. Future archaeologists could dig down through mud and detritus to identify when widescale use of concrete first became obvious. This would tell them they’d struck the 20th century. Concrete, of course, has been used for millennia – ancient Roman concrete is still standing in some places. But it didn’t become ubiquitous until recently.

  3. Chicken bones

  Humans like chicken. As of 2018, we were eating about 65 billion of these birds a year. At any one time, there are 23 billion chickens alive. But why would chicken bones be a telltale sign we were here? Because of how common they are – and because our long reliance on these birds has changed them dramatically. They no longer resemble their sleek jungle fowl antecedents – they’re far larger, grow quicker and eat differently. Broiler (meat) chickens can’t survive without human intervention. These changes are so profound that it’s as if we’ve bred a new species, according to paleobiology and Anthropocene expert Jan Zalasiewicz, who told AFP: “It usually takes millions of years […] but here it has taken just decades to produce a new form of animal.” …..

  https://theconversation.com/plastic-rocks-plutonium-and-chicken-bones-the-markers-were-laying-down-in-deep-time-209788

  The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle - Max Telford
• 
  markjc
  November 23rd, 2025
  

  touche!

  The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle - Max Telford
• 
  organicbooks
  November 23rd, 2025
  

  

  Thank you Mojo!

  The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle - Max Telford

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