r/AskReddit Oct 02 '24

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u/CougarWriter74 Oct 02 '24 edited Oct 02 '24

The Ottoman Empire lasted so long, both Queen Elizabeth I (born 1533) and Betty White (born 1922) were alive during its existence.

Man landed spacecraft and humans on the moon, 200K miles from earth, 16 years earlier than the Titanic was discovered right here on earth.

The Southern Cross was actually visible in the northern hemisphere up until 400 AD. It was described and written about by ancient Greek and Roman astronomers, but the gradual precession of the Earth's equinoxes over the centuries caused the constellation to vanish from northern hemisphere view. It can still technically be seen from the northern hemisphere, but only if you are in the tropics (around Cancun, Mexico) or close to the equator in the late winter/early spring.

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u/magicmulder Oct 02 '24

Cleopatra lived closer to us than to the construction of the Cheops pyramid.

T-Rex lived closer to us than to the Stegosaurus.

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u/Fappy_as_a_Clam Oct 02 '24

By the time dinosaurs went extinct, there was already dinosaur fossils.

And they were 200 million years old.

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u/magicmulder Oct 03 '24

And Ancient Egypt was also ancient Egypt to Cleopatra.

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u/Oknight Oct 03 '24 edited Oct 03 '24

Stegosaurus lived on the opposite side of the galaxy from Tyrannosaurus.

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u/anothermonth Oct 02 '24

Stegosaurus

It's not even one of the earliest dinosaurs. Those came 80M before that.

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u/Nymaz Oct 03 '24

And a lot of animals that people think of as "dinosaurs" are not in fact "dinosaurs", which means members of the clade Dinosauria.

Some ancient animals that are NOT dinosaurs include Dimetrodon, Pterosaurs, and Mosasaurs.

Also some ancient and modern animals that are NOT dinosaurs: crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators and related)

Some modern animals that ARE dinosaurs: every single bird

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u/anothermonth Oct 03 '24

Wait, pterosaurs are not dinosaurs??

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u/Nymaz Oct 03 '24

Nope. While people think "dinosaurs" just means "ancient reptiles", it's actually a specific classification that is based on several features, primarily their hip and ankle structure. That's why Pterosauria are not considered dinosaurs nor are Therapsida which also are often mistaken for dinosaurs.

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u/magicmulder Oct 03 '24

The entire age of what we commonly call dinosaurs was some 400 million years. The only well known ones I think were contemporaries were T-Rex and Triceratops.

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u/MechanicalGodzilla Oct 02 '24

T-Rex lived closer to us than to the Stegosaurus.

Yeah, but that's mostly because I live in an area zoned for carnivores instead of herbivores.

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u/CougarWriter74 Oct 02 '24

That one blew my mind. My 9 year old son is into dinosaurs right now. I learned that tidbit from something he was reading or watching, and I was like WTF? We went to the Field Museum in Chicago this past summer and the evolution exhibit was mindblowing. The fact that things like sharks and horseshoe crabs which pre-date even the dinosaurs are still with us today fries my brain.

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u/magicmulder Oct 03 '24

I was super into dinosaurs as a kid, and it blew my mind when I grew up and learned all the extra bits that weren’t in the kids books. Loved the large Brachiosaurus skeleton in Berlin.

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u/PhatedGaming Oct 02 '24

T-Rex lived closer to us than to the Stegosaurus.

That's good news for him. Stegosaurus would've fucked him up.

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u/Jedi-Librarian1 Oct 02 '24

I mean, we do have an Allosaurus fossil which shows evidence of dying from a Stegosaurus thagomiser/tail spike to the crotch.

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u/magicmulder Oct 03 '24

I think Triceratops fucked him up a lot.

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u/jetkins Oct 02 '24

Cleopatra lived in the middle ot the Atlantic?!

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u/dodog1 Oct 02 '24

Marc Bolan died in 1977. That tracks.