this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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Also cool that for a period of like 60 million years, nothing decomposed dead trees. As they would die or fall over, they'd just stay there, piling up. This is where most oil came from. The massive amounts of trees stacking up before bacteria and fungus evolved to decomposed them. Imagine 60 million years worth of trees just lying around.
*Thought I'd add an edit, since this post got quite a few eyes on it: It was mostly coal that all those trees turned into. Not oil.
I love this fact, and am curious where you learned it?
I learned it nearly 30 years ago in school. I just did a search and found a link about it, though.
Also, seems that either I remembered wrongly, or my teacher made a mistake, but it seems it was most of the worlds coal; not oil, that came from all the piles of trees from that period.
https://www.thorogood.co.uk/treevolution-how-trees-came-first-and-rot-came-later-in-earths-deep-past/
Correct. In theory, we could make more oil in the lab. We cannot make more coal, because the wood will get broken down by bacteria far before it turns to peat, lignite, sub-bituminous, or bituminous coal, and much less anthracite.