<story><title>Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)</title><url>https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s almost guaranteed that bacteria eating plastics will proliferate globally at some point, we&amp;#x27;ve put so much of this stuff in the environment and it&amp;#x27;s just free energy ready to be consumed if your digestive system knows how.</text></item><item><author>digging</author><text>In general, it&amp;#x27;s mind-blowing to travel back in Earth&amp;#x27;s history and realize there were tens or hundreds of millions of years where strategies that are commonplace today had never been tried before (or they&amp;#x27;d tried too early and failed). It makes one wonder, what will be the strategies of future life which no creature has yet evolved? Can we even imagine it?</text></item><item><author>dekhn</author><text>That didn&amp;#x27;t sound too right for me (but my biology knowledge is dated at this point) so I read the relevant section from that page.  It concludes wiht:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;The delayed fungal evolution hypothesis is controversial, however, and has been challenged by other researchers, who conclude that a combination of vast depositional systems present on the continents during the formation of Pangaea and widespread humid, tropical conditions were responsible for the high rate of coal formation.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting to think just how much went on  before trees with lignin showed up.  Flowers are also relatively recent - 150mya.</text></item><item><author>jonplackett</author><text>Weirdly, there was actually a period of history where this was normal.&lt;p&gt;During the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago trees just fell over and lay there because nothing had evolved to decay them yet.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Carboniferous&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Carboniferous&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jvanderbot</author><text>And suddenly plastics won&amp;#x27;t be the sterile, durable wonders that they are. We are living in &lt;i&gt;The golden age of plastics&lt;/i&gt;, folks.</text></comment>
<story><title>Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)</title><url>https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s almost guaranteed that bacteria eating plastics will proliferate globally at some point, we&amp;#x27;ve put so much of this stuff in the environment and it&amp;#x27;s just free energy ready to be consumed if your digestive system knows how.</text></item><item><author>digging</author><text>In general, it&amp;#x27;s mind-blowing to travel back in Earth&amp;#x27;s history and realize there were tens or hundreds of millions of years where strategies that are commonplace today had never been tried before (or they&amp;#x27;d tried too early and failed). It makes one wonder, what will be the strategies of future life which no creature has yet evolved? Can we even imagine it?</text></item><item><author>dekhn</author><text>That didn&amp;#x27;t sound too right for me (but my biology knowledge is dated at this point) so I read the relevant section from that page.  It concludes wiht:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;The delayed fungal evolution hypothesis is controversial, however, and has been challenged by other researchers, who conclude that a combination of vast depositional systems present on the continents during the formation of Pangaea and widespread humid, tropical conditions were responsible for the high rate of coal formation.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s interesting to think just how much went on  before trees with lignin showed up.  Flowers are also relatively recent - 150mya.</text></item><item><author>jonplackett</author><text>Weirdly, there was actually a period of history where this was normal.&lt;p&gt;During the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago trees just fell over and lay there because nothing had evolved to decay them yet.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Carboniferous&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Carboniferous&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>peteradio</author><text>I used to entertain this idea but I&amp;#x27;m somewhat skeptical such a thing could proliferate, there is just not that much plastic relative to the other sources of energy an animal can evolve towards.  I&amp;#x27;d be interested to hear otherwise though.</text></comment>