You have surely heard the sentence that “Oil is made up of dinosaurs liquefied bones”. And if you were quite small, you surely believed it and you continued to transmit this idea to the young generations and so on. However, all this is false!
To understand this, you have to go back hundreds of millions of years back, even long before dinosaurs! Like all living things that one day born on our planet, algae and plankton lived according to the cycle of life (birth, life and death).
Hundreds of millions of years ago, life was mainly concentrated in the ocean. Thus, when they died, these living organisms fell to the bottom of the ocean and were buried under significant layers of sediment. With a pressure that has accumulated for hundreds of millions of years and intense heat, this mixture of algae and plankton ended up turning into a viscous liquid, the famous black gold: oil.
“” “For a strange reason, the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs has remained anchored in the minds of many people. But oil actually comes from billions of billions of tiny seaweed and plankton”Explained Reidar Müller, geologist at the University of Oslo in Science Norway in 2022.
We see the clever little ones and no, so it does not make oil a “biofuel”. It is even in (very) largely responsible due to its extraction and its use of global warming.
But then, why do we think of dinosaurs?
Well because there is bound to be a little bit, but far too little to say that oil comes from liquefied dinosaurs bones.
Indeed, on November 1, 2024, in Science & Lifewe answered the question of whether oil came from dinosaurs and we had been able to count on the response of Raymond Michels, researcher in geology at the University of Lorraine.
“” “Only 1% of initial organic matter turns into hydrocarbon: the process therefore requires considerable quantities of living. However to be at the origin of the oil that we currently use, the dinosaurs were far from being numerous enough … Unlike the organisms making up phytoplankton!”.
So, to make the belief a little more true, we can say that: “Oil is infinitely composed of the liquefied remains of dinosaurs, but once dead, they mainly served meals for other species and not ingredients to make Sans-Plomb 95.»
We grant you, it's longer. But at least it's right.
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
