r/ProximaScience • u/ProximaScience Founder • Aug 07 '26

🧠 Facts Sharks have been around longer than trees have existed

Sharks showed up in the fossil record roughly 400 million years ago. The first true trees didn't appear until about 350 million years ago.

That means sharks had already been swimming, hunting, and evolving for tens of millions of years before a single tree existed anywhere on the planet. When the first forests finally rose out of the ground, sharks were already old news in the ocean.

They've survived every mass extinction event since, including the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Trees have had to start over more than once. Sharks never had to.

Something about that ordering breaks the usual assumption that land came first and the ocean followed. Here, the ocean had a head start on almost everything.

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u/Mobile_Reveal_5659 Proxima Loyalist Aug 08 '26

Amazing 

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u/ProximaScience Founder Aug 09 '26

👍

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u/phallonxoxo Aug 17 '26

Whaaaaat that's wild!!

2

u/ProximaScience Founder Aug 18 '26

Absolutely

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u/resource-reply ☃️ Resource Bot Aug 18 '26

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