Fun idea. At least one correction for the table: For wila/bryorii fremonti's age of 250mya they cite the "geologic history" of... moss. Wila is a lichen, which is primarily fungal with algal symbiotes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryoria_fremontii And even given an edible moss, the fact that moss existed 250mya would not imply that particular species existed "morphologically unchanged". The "reindeer lichen" entry appears to have the same issue.
I wonder if there are any fungi that would make that list?
isn't Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta) highly toxic? i don't think it's edible...
This is an interesting way to think about plants and animals.
I'm finding it surprisingly hard to find sources for known age of species - is that information collected somewhere? Or is it something we often just don't know because of how sparse the fossil record is?
Wondering because of trying to look up the age of fern species I do eat (no cinnamon fern near me) and I can't find out.
That's because when something becomes a new species is a surprisingly difficult and contentious debate in biology.
That's simply due to the nature of evolution. It's nearly impossible to look at one past generation of chicken to the next to figure out when the ancestor was no longer a chicken. Yet, go back far enough and you'll find T-Rexes in the mix.
Every generation is a new missing link. It's an extremely fuzzy process.
Greg Bear and his fancy pants radio says otherwise.
> I'm finding it surprisingly hard to find sources for known age of species - is that information collected somewhere? Or is it something we often just don't know because of how sparse the fossil record is?
It depends on what you mean by the age of the species. You can find the oldest known fossil occurrence at the Paleobiology Database [1] and the divergence time from molecular phylogenies via TimeTree [2].
It's pretty tricky to find out, yeah. And new evidence is coming in all the time. All the methods are either floors (a fossil at X date proves a species existed then, but lack of fossils found yet might be inconclusive) or estimates (like molecular clock techniques). Dating fossils themselves (or rather the rocks they're buried in) isn't always easy or possible. For more out-of-the-way species, if anyone has bothered trying to figure out the age it's likely buried in scientific sources that are tricky for novices to find or search, and maybe under debate.
That make wonder, how many fossils there might be at total on earth, and with current trend, how much time would humanity should continue to survive before those remaining will approach zero, if fossil formation as a known rate.
> how many fossils there might be at total on earth
The number is both incalculable and vague - is a shark tooth enough to count as a fossil? How about diatoms and other microfossils?
Diatomaceous earth alone contains around 10^6-10^7 frustules (the shell of a diatom) per gram. If you count them as fossils then the lower bound is probably in the quadrillions.
Reindeer lichen is not a moss (Wiki link), or even a Plantae...
If you don't restrict the list to living things, then salt and water are surely the oldest answers. :)
Hands up who has ever eaten anything from that list!
I think this might say more about your geographic location than you think :)
People from other continents always surprise me with various fruits they taken for granted their entire life, but I've never heard about, and vice-versa.
> I think this might say more about your geographic location than you think
Clearly, for instance Welwitschia (1) listed. I think this says a lot about location.
It's a fascinating plant, but it is an endangered species, endemic to the Namib desert. And as far as I know, not that commonly eaten.
Lotus root is pretty common in Chinese and Japanese cuisine. I've had it pickled and in a Sichuan dry pot. It's crunchy and takes on flavors pretty well.
We use it in cuisines from India, particularly from Tamil nadu, as well. Lotus root, seeds, the petals, pretty much all.
Whoever smelled a ginkgo fruit and said "let's eat this" !
my wife and I regularly eat lotus root, it's quite delicious and common in chinese cooking. the others not so much.
On a side note there are 1000s even 10s of thousand of edible plant based species that grow on the earth. i don't know how old they are though.
Fiddleheads from ferns are available at farmer's markets in the spring in my area, though not from the cinnamon fern specifically.
I'm having trouble finding sources for other specific fern species, though many ferns have been around for hundreds of millions of years.
I used to get them at Whole Foods in Nashua, NH. They're quite seasonal so I'd always grab some if I see em.
Water caltrop nuts are common in Taiwan, very nutty and good for meat soups.
Fern fiddleheads aren't bad if you get them at the right time, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat them.
Lotus root is pretty common. A crunchy tuber that keeps its texture after cooking, bland taste, unique visual appeal. I threw some in the last pot of bean chili my family made, and the kids liked it.
People eat Horseshoe Crabs? No way, but their precious blood give me
'eaten as a delicacy in some parts of Asia' according to Wikipedia, but to be fair OP is only asserting possibilities anyway (the criteria are 1) old enough to have been around for dinosaurs to eat; 2) edible by humans).
Technically they eat the roe. Horseshoe crabs have very little meat and it’s so tough as to be practically inedible.
I've tried it in Thailand on a dare, there's very little edible meat on it
No fiddle heads?
I thought avocados were where old food eaten by dinosaurs or at least very large ancient rodents. I guess it doesn't meet the 100 million year old age mark.
It was once thought that giant ground sloths were important for spreading avocados, but that seems to have been a mistake. Anyway, that was long after the dinosaurs. Flowering plants in general were still pretty new by the time the dinosaurs died out. I bet an actual dinosaur never saw an avocado. :)
I take Gingo three times a week, and eat Horseshoe Crab a few times a year.
Meat
Which one?
Sturgeon. Maybe lamprey (I've never tried it)
Maybe pythons - some types of crocodile/alligators. But that's very region specific.
Seeing my neighbors gathering ginkgo nuts made me curious enough to try them, and I waded right in without understanding the risks! TLDR— they're not a great food source. It's yet another one of those cases where you have to wonder what "delicacy" means.
The actual fruit (looks like a rotten plum, smells terrible) has ginkgolic acids which cause contact dermatitis (think poison ivy).
Then the nuts themselves contain Ginkgotoxin, which interferes with your B6, screwing up your nervous system and causing seizures. Cooking reduces but does not eliminate Ginkgotoxin.
I only ate one, and ate it raw. It was a delightful texture, but tasted like chewing random plant matter. Like leaves from a tree. Was maybe half a cubic centimeter of matter. Escaped any ill effects.
According to my research, kids can have seizures from as few as 10 nuts, which would probably be like 1.5 spoonfuls if you mashed them up. The guidelines I found don't seem very scientific but supposedly a kid can safely handle 3-5 nuts over the course of a day, and an adult could handle 5-10. So it doesn't seem like there is a good margin of safety.
Overall a real risk to health for an insignificant amount of food that doesn't taste special. But a nice texture.
> contact dermatitis
Lots of food is like this, for example mangoes.
I eat foods with long history of co-evolution and domestication.
Barley and Yogurt, they are the dogs we domesticated from wolves that changed us too.
Daily barley water is a life changer, I don't think our digestive systems really function without a smidgen of daily barley.
"We still eat today" vs. "Someone consumed this today" is disingenuous at best.