Dinosaur Food: 100M year old foods we still eat today
This article unearths a fascinating list of 'dinosaur food'—species that have remained morphologically unchanged for millions of years and are still consumed today. Inspired by Oliver Sacks' musings on the ancient Ginkgo biloba tree, the author meticulously compiles edibles ranging from the 480-million-year-old horseshoe crab to the 65-million-year-old lotus. It's a delightful, niche exploration of paleo-gastronomy that perfectly captures Hacker News's appreciation for deep dives into unexpected scientific curiosities.
The Lowdown
Inspired by a passage in Oliver Sacks' book, the author embarked on a quest to identify the oldest foods humans still consume today. The journey began with the Ginkgo biloba tree, a 'living fossil' whose nuts are a common East Asian delicacy, prompting the question: what other incredibly ancient species are still part of our diet? The criteria for inclusion were simple: the food must be edible by humans and its morphology must be unchanged since its fossil age.
Here are some of the remarkable ancient foods identified:
- Horseshoe Crab (480M years old): Tachypleus tridentatus, an animal from the Animalia kingdom.
- Ginkgo Nuts (290M years old): From Ginkgo biloba, also known as Maidenhair tree nuts.
- Wila (250M years old): Bryoria fremontii, a type of lichen.
- Reindeer Lichen (250M years old): Cladonia rangiferina, another ancient lichen.
- Sago Palm (200M years old): Cycas revoluta, a primitive plant.
- Monkey Puzzle Tree Nuts (160M years old): From Araucaria araucana, a conifer.
- Horsetail (140M years old): Equisetum arvense, a spore-producing vascular plant.
- Welwitschia (112M years old): A unique desert plant, simply known as Welwitschia.
- Cinnamon Fern (70M years old): Osmundastrum cinnamomeum, a type of fern.
- Water Caltrop Nuts (66M years old): From Trapa natans, an aquatic plant.
- Lotus (65M+ years old): Nelumbo lutea and Nelumbo nucifera, aquatic flowering plants.
This compilation highlights the incredible biological persistence of certain species and offers a humbling perspective on our culinary heritage. It's truly astonishing to realize that some of the ingredients we occasionally enjoy have existed, largely unchanged, for hundreds of millions of years, predating not just humans but entire epochs of Earth's history.