When looking at a geological timescale, typically ‘the deeper you dig, the older stuff gets’, right?
So, where does this buildup of new sediment come from?
I understand we’re talking about very large timeframes here, but I still dont really get it.
In: 19
Dirt is lots of stuff, but if you mean soil in particular, i.e. what plants and fungi grow in, it takes at least 100 years, and sometimes many more, for a centimetre of soil to form from the breakdown of stuff like decayed organic matter (plants, trees, grasses, fruit, fungi, animal remains and waste etc).
It comes from time. Everything breaks down given enough time. If you left a brand new modern car exposed to the elements in a field, or desert or up a mountain, it would be completely gone in a matter of a few hundred years. I don’t mean buried in the ground, but just totally eroded to nothing by the same forces that shape the natural world, only a lot quicker.
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