There’s a meme going around (maybe it’s old but I’ve now just seen it) that sates:
the appalachian mountains are older than saturn’s rings. the appalachian mountains are older than dinosaurs. the appalachian mountains are older than trees. the appalachian mountains are literally older than BONES. the appalachian mountains should be regarded with pure terror. [sic]
I tried googling with varied results, really older than Saturn’s rings?
.
The Appalachian mountains formed around 480 million years ago.
Dinosaurs first appeared 250 million years ago.
Trees first appeared 360 million years ago.
Vertebrates first appeared 550 million years ago.
Saturn’s rings formed between 10 to 100 million years ago.
So, all true except for the bones part.
Saturn’s rings do seem to have been formed relatively recently:
The findings indicate that Saturn’s rings formed between 10 million and 100 million years ago. SOURCE
This says the Appalachian Mountains are 480 million years old:
Wow, incredible. It just goes against what intuition would have led me to believe.
Thanks
Sharks are older than trees, but still not as old as the Appalachians.
My Google Fu fails me. Do the Migo, the fungi from Yuggoth, mine the Appalachian mountains or am I thinking of a different range?
Why is this meme about a mountain range that is half a billion years old? The Black Hills are 3x older. “Old as the mountains” is practically a cliche. The eye-poppingly interesting thing about that meme is that Saturn’s rings are so young.
I agree with this part.
The “age” of the Appalachians depends on what you mean by it. The first uplifting did indeed take place that long ago and the mountains contain rocks are at least that old. But you can say that about a lot of places such as Upstate NY, whose rocks are also older than dinosaurs but whose tall hills only took their final form 15,000 or so years ago when the glaciers retreated.
However, the final uplifting, the one that gave the mountains their final shape barring any subsequent erosion, took place only 100 million or so years ago, so not older than bones. But it is still pretty amazing that they’re still older than Saturn’s rings.
But, as evidenced by sharks, not all vertebrates have bones. Didn’t cartilaginous skeletons come first? The ages for the Appalachians and for vertebrates are close enough that it’s at least plausible that bones didn’t come about until a little after the mountains.
Ironically, I’ve usually heard it as “old as the hills”. The meme itself is about people saying how lame the Appalachians are compared to the Rockies (or Alps or Andes or whatever) and counterpointing with how ancient the Appalachians are compared to newer, taller, mountain ranges. I guess no one is shit-talking the Black Hills for them to get a spirited defense.
What’s older than the Appalachian range?
The Precambrian rock exposed on the Canadian Shield. 4 billion years old.
Sharks started off bony.
Ah, fascinating. Though it looks like that’s a fairly recent discovery (2020). So if the meme is older than that, then it might still have been accurate to the best available science of the time.
Where the Appalachians originally taller? I seem to recall reading that somewhere; that they’ve been eroded substantially and may have been more like the Rockies originally.
That’s what I remember learning back in the day, but for a somewhat more current cite:
Interesting; thanks for the link.
So if the Appalachians are older than trees, that means they’re older than coal. So how do they have coal deposits?
They are older than trees, not plants.
Part of the answer is that there was plenty of vegetation that could become coal long before there we trees.
As far as I recall, most coal was was formed in the Carboniferous (natch) and Permian periods, which took place long after the mountains rose. Does that mean that Appalacian coal is uniquely ancient?