• DoubleDongle@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Wikipedia says they date back 480 million years, during the Ordovician period. I think the atmosphere would have been pretty breathable, but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so, with bugs following them. Nothing saw those mountains. If you time-traveled to the Pangean mountains, you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years. Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet. The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.

    • Zwiebel@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 hours ago

      The couple of people who’ve been on the moon have seen that kind of emptiness

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      6 hours ago

      but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so

      Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet.

      Pretty sure the mountains will still be there. Spoiler alert. I started at the end of the book.

      you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years.

      The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.

      That’s badass though. Except that we might be returning to that sterile and desolate emptiness here shortly.

      Also, don’t forget that fungi, algae, and lichen colonized dry land before the plants arrived, paving the way for them by eating rocks and pooping dirt.