[zaken]

Sharks are older than trees

[colechristensen]

And the north star, Polaris, is a fraction the age of sharks at only 50-70 Mya (it's a trinary star system but the other two stars are much dimmer and not visible to the eye)

[echelon]

I love this fact.

Also: life on earth is almost as old as the universe itself, within the same order of magnitude. 4.1 GYA (billion years ago) vs 13.8 GYA. We're old and intelligence is hard.

[baxtr]

I think there is a theory that we’re not seeing any aliens simply because life on Earth started so early.

[yread]

That's not that early, no? There was probably enough C, H, N, O, P, S, Na atoms for life to start 10B years ago. You probably couldnt rely on iron being everywhere though but that's not such a hard requirement.

[Ericson2314]

Yes I love it too, wish more people appreciated it

[gusgus01]

Another Fun Fact: the Appalachian mountains formed before sharks existed, the rings of Saturn existed, and before bones existed.

[dredmorbius]

But they're (possibly) younger than the New River!

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Kanawha_River_tribu...>

(Blew my mind when I first encountered this a few years back.)

[sethammons]

I think you misstated your fun fact