Dinnertime geology: the present (#1)

[kaberett]

"The present" is commonly defined as "1 January 1950".

For historical reasons.

If you read "before present" in the context of radiocarbon dating? The "present" they're talking about is, yes, 1950.

This is strictly also true in geology, where we use e.g. "Ma" to mean "million years ago" - the "ago" is implicit, because we are champions of explicit usage, and refers to the present as defined above - but on the kind of timescale I work with, well, what's sixty years between friends?

Comments

[steorra]

That's interesting and I didn't know it. Thank you.

Today I learnt that the hyena family actually has four species. Spotted hyenas are what I knew about before as hyenas, and they're primarily hunters (and what shows up in Digger. And with really interesting social features.) Striped hyenas live in Asia as well as Africa, and are primarily scavengers, and less packful than spotted ones; brown hyenas just live in Africa, and are also primarily scavengers. And Aardwolves are also in the hyena family - I knew about them but didn't know they were in the hyena family. And they're insectivores. They will eat from a termite nest without destroying it, so they can later come back and eat more from the same nest.

[kaberett]

I knew about striped and spotted, but not the other two! Thank you :-)

[sorrillia]

And now your readers---who are admittedly mostly not in the habit of receiving mail from me---understand why I tend to date letters in years "after present".

[redbird]

Now I need a geologist to write to, just so I can date the letters that way.

[sorrillia]

You can always do it with non-geologists. Most of the people I write to are.