Eli5 how is crude oil made?

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As a child, I was always told that when the dinosaurs died, they eventually got broken down into crude oil, which get refined into a list of products.

Well I seen a post somewhere that was saying the crude oil wasn’t made from dinosaurs. So if it’s not made from the remains of the dinos, how it is made then.

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Bacteria, algae, and other microorganisms lived in the primordial seas. When they died, they sank to the bottom of the seabed; and only a small fraction of them would have been eaten. Thick layers of these were overlaid with silt and sand, which over time compress and harden into shale and sandstone. Under this rocky layer, the bodies of the microorganisms decay into crude oil.

Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the ELI5 version.

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