Before 2005, fossil findings indicated that grasses evolved around 55 million years ago. Finds of grass-like phytoliths in Cretaceous dinosaur coprolites from the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) aged Lameta Formation of India have pushed this date back to 66 million years ago.
Dinosaurs ruled between 275 and 65 million years ago, but the earliest verified grass fossils are from about 55 million years ago.
The sea grass plant is believed to be around 4,500 years old. Above, a map showing the sea grass in Shark Bay. (Source: Edgeloe, et al., The Royal Society Publishing.) But the huge sea grass meadow in Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, seems to be doing very well.
It's sea grass — grass growing underwater — just off the coast of Spain that lives up to 200,000 years.
Although land plants have existed for 410 million years, grass is only 65 million years old, less than 16% of the total. Before grass existed, its niche was filled by smaller vascular plants that lacked the characteristic blades or siliceous tissue of grasses.
Native grasses are well adapted to the Australian environment with its generally infertile soils and variable climate. Both of these environmental attributes have moulded the characteristics of our native flora, including the grasses.
Credit: A.M. Rosen and R.C. Power. The main plant category found in the cave was grasses. Like modern man, they evidently ate wheat and barley seeds, as well as smaller-seeded grasses not used today for consumption.
Some 3.5 million years ago, our ancestors put grass on the menu. If you could travel back in time about 8 million years, you'd find a creature in an African tree that was the ancestor of all current apes and humans.
Around 3.5 million years ago, human ancestors became less ape-like in their diet, supplementing leaves and fruit with grass and sedge, according to new research published in four new studies in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The most common plants used in ancient Egypt according to various authors are the Haifa grasses, Palms, Heeds, Rushes, Sedges and Flax including fibres. The Haifa grasses comprise : the Imperata cykndrica L. and Desmostachya bipinnata L.
It's at least 4,500 years old and spans 180km of shallow ocean. While looking at the genetic diversity of Shark Bay's seagrass meadows, Australian researchers discovered that the meadows were in fact a single plant or 'clone' of the same individual.
Grass trees are often very long-lived; some are estimated to be 350 to 450 years old! Xanthorrhoea are monocots (meaning they only have one cotyledon, which is the leaf attached to the embryo within the seed).
Zoysia Grass Is Soft
Coming in first place is the softness of the Zoysia lawn. Zoysia is a lovely soft lawn to both walk across barefoot, or for children to play on.
Later finds would go on to discover that other families of grass, such as primitive rice plants, had also existed during the Cretaceous. For the first time we could be certain, not only did grass exist during the dinosaur age, but dinosaurs actively grazed on it too.
Scientists have discovered the first evidence that some dinosaurs dined on grass — a big surprise, since grasses were thought to have evolved after dinosaurs died off.
A new UO study confirms what earth scientists have long suspected: Plants first appeared on land about 460 million years ago, in the middle of a 45-million-year-long geologic period known as the Ordovician.
Grass is plentiful, non-toxic, and edible, but nonetheless it's impractical for us to eat the stuff. The reasoning is two fold: First, our stomachs have a difficult time digesting certain kinds of raw leaves and grasses. Second, grass contains a lot of silica, an abrasive substance that wears down your teeth.
Humans cannot digest grass as they lack the microbes that synthesize enzymes involved in cellulose digestion. Additionally, the pH of the rumen ranges from 6 to 7 while the pH of human stomach is around 1-3.
There are some animals, such as cows, goats and sheeps which graze grass that have symbiotic bacteria in their abdomen which can digest cellulose. Humans do not have these bacteria nor cellulase, the enzyme needed to break the bonds of cellulose whereas the bacteria in a cow's gut does produce cellulase.
The diet of the earliest hominins was probably somewhat similar to the diet of modern chimpanzees: omnivorous, including large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat (e.g., Andrews & Martin 1991; Milton 1999; Watts 2008).
When you imagine Neolithic hunter-gatherers, you probably think of people eating hunks of meat around an open fire. But the truth is that many humans living 10,000 years ago were eating more vegetables and grains than meat.
Studies show that the city dwellers ate a variety of meats, dairy, grains and other plants. The shards yielded traces of proteins found in barley, wheat and peas, along with several animal meats and milks.
While you may not think of your lawn as an organism, the answer is actually a resounding yes, grass is a living thing! It grows and reproduces, and it can die, just like anything else that's alive. Keep this in mind when you're taking care of your grass, and do your best to help it thrive and live its best life.
Long before steel-coil innersprings and high-tech memory foam—or any mattress at all, for that matter—early humans slept on layers of reeds, rushes, and leaves, where they bedded down along with their extended families.
Caveman beds
Archaeologists recently uncovered the oldest bed on earth. Dating back more than 77,000 years, the bed was surprisingly well preserved. It was found in a rock shelter in South Africa, and it's the earliest sign of sleeping behaviour yet. The archaeologists found a mattress complete with soft bedding.