Sharks are, unfortunately, ancient

We've all had one of those days at work. Maybe you just finished a big project, or there are no clients booked, or no customers are coming in. If you're not really good friends with your coworkers, this is where it can get awkward, and you start scrambling for conversation topics. What's the most recent TV show you've watched? When was the last time you read a book? Do you know anything about the people also standing in this room? How do you cut the silence in a way that doesn't haunt you late at night when your brain dredges up all of the most embarrassing things you've ever said?

Well, no need to worry. With a handful of interesting facts that sometimes sound like something you made up off of the top of your head, you can feel smart, look smarter, and start a conversation that doesn't revolve around not knowing things about your coworkers' lives. If you want to deploy these tactics with even more success, read up on related facts so that you can keep the conversation going like your life depends on it! In fact, I can start you off with a real brain-tickler.

Sharks have been around for longer than the rings of Saturn.

Fossils tell us that sharks and their ancestors have been around since the Late Ordovician Period, a stretch of time about 450 million years ago. For comparison, human ancestors have a comparable history of roughly 2 million years, which seems paltry in comparison. The rings of Saturn, meanwhile, have only been here for about 100 million. Scientists think they should be a lot older, in fact, and we don't even know why they're so young, nor where they came from.

Now, per the title, you might think there's something inherently bad about the fact that sharks are this old. No, no, that's not it - in fact, sharks are remarkable creatures with a fascinating history all on their own. I could talk about sharks for ages. (Not as long as some other topics, granted, but certainly for a while.) The issue I have here is that it really throws a wrench into my perception of time, and my perception of my perception of time.

Your own perception of things that are young or old is kind of useless, because tricky things like this just don't line up with it all. Space stuff is supposed to be way older than living stuff - and it usually is! - but the fact that things can be "new" in space tosses a wrench into the works. What are we even supposed to consider "new" in space? What are we supposed to consider "new" in sharks? What's the latest, greatest, fastest, hottest model of shark that gets all the marine biologists drooling? Can sharks make astrophysicists drool, too?

I mean, maybe, but there might be some other problems there if they're not even that interested in sharks but they're drooling anyway.

There are people out there to whom this is "common knowledge". Those folks scoff. "Doesn't everybody know that?" they say. "Don't we all know the age of the earliest shark fossil and the age of Saturn's rings?" No. No, we don't. We don't know either of those things, so we can't compare them and realize that our own picture of our world versus outer space is a little skewed. Humans might be babies in the face of Saturn's rings, which we all expect, but Saturn's rings are babies in the face of sharks, which is common knowledge to nobody I've told so far. It really illustrates that nobody here knows where we stand in the geological scheme of things, including myself, and that makes me feel small and awed in the same way I think I would be if I got to look at Saturn up close.

When I told my coworker Sam about this, he had an idea for a "three wolf moon" t-shirt, but it's three sharks and Saturn, and honestly, that rules. I'd wear that shirt.