I'm back in the late Cretaceous; what plants can I eat?

Dearest botanists & herbalists of Wauf,

Hypothetically speaking, if I were on an expedition to colonize the Late Cretaceous (so 65 million years ago'ish) what kind of flora would me and my team be able to forage for? Lets just assume for the sake of the argument that we 100% know the Dinosaurs, Fish, and other fauna are all perfectly edible (as is their giant flintstones-tier eggs), but what we need to know is plants. Has fruit been invented yet? What do we have for nuts, edible grasses, etc? Does grass exist yet, or if it does is it simply too primitive and obscure?

Or would it just be better for us to bring some seeds back with us?

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

Homeless People Are Sexy Shirt $21.68

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Or would it just be better for us to bring some seeds back with us?
    >unironically bringing invasive species back in time
    Don't even think about it homie!

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    fruit was coming around in the cretaceous, so probably those and berries. there were also aroids so maybe you can find one with edible stems.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You don't want to eat Aroids now, I don't know if they still had calcium oxalate crystals then.

      So there's been a lot of discussion over this, and now I'll give the correct answer: you're only going to have two good sources of nutritious, non-toxic food in this place and time - conifer needles (yum...bitter) and ferns, which MIGHT be more palatable if you get the right ones and prepare them just right. Don't expect too many flavoring agents. Collect some seawater to make salt.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I'll give the correct answer:
        multiple other correct answers have already been suggested.

        other parts of conifers, rice and possibly other grains, and very likely fruits, nuts, and berries.

        The late cretaceous wasn't that much different from now botanically. The main difference was domestication.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          There aren't going to be any grains available in the Cretaceous. Grasses didn't become a dominant plant until about the middle of the Cenozoic. Fruits would also most likely have been unpalatable if you could even find them. As for seeds, yes, some of the conifers may have edible seeds, as indicated earlier, but I wouldn't expect much else to have edible seeds. There would be no berries most likely.

          You guys also have to realize Angiosperms didn't really become common at all places at the same time. The southern hemisphere has always been a stronghold of primitive plants like Araucaria and tree ferns. There's a reason for that.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >There aren't going to be any grains available in the Cretaceous
            for the third time, rice dates from the early cretaceous and was global by the end of the cretaceous.

            try to keep up, you're almost 50 years out of date.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              where your info got tossed out is when rice pollen was found in dinosaur coprolites from the late jurassic in india and then found in sediments all over the world by the middle cretaceous.

              this moves the evolution of angiosperms back almost 100 million years before they appear as plant fossils. Grasses other than rice have also been found in the cretaceous, and were apparently global and dominant by the end of the cretaceous.

              palynological studies also indicate declines in ferns and conifers at the same rate that angiosperms spread. Again, all during the cretaceous and well before the first angiosperm fossils appear.

              The current view is that angiosperms, much like birds, evolved during the late jurassic but didn't really leave a global record until the early to mid cretaceous and left few if any body fossils until the end of the cretaceous.

              Not only are you wrong, but you're a fricking moron for thinking you're going to be building rice paddies in the Cretaceous. You can say wrong shit any smug way you like, but it can't make you right.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >to be building rice paddies in the Cretaceous.

                To be fair; even if there is rice I've had some time to think about it and growing crops and gardening will probably be impractical beyond just for scientific purposes.
                Dinosaurs probably won't have a cautionary fear or anxiety towards man and it might simply be too difficult to keep large grazing animals from trampling any field we make. I don't know if Ceratopsians herd (I think they're more like Rhinos?), but I do know that Hadrosaurs herd and they're fricking enormous. They're alarmingly enormous. I keep misremembering them as the size of a Moose, but they're easily Elephant-sized.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You can say wrong shit any smug way you like, but it can't make you right.
                back at ya
                >the origin and early evolution of grasses are controversial, with estimated ages from molecular dating ranging between 59 and 129 Ma (million years ago). Here we report the discovery of basalmost grasses from the late Early Cretaceous (Albian, 113-101 Ma) of China based on microfossils (silicified epidermal pieces and phytoliths) extracted from a special structure along the dentition of a basal hadrosauroid (duck-billed dinosaur). Thus, this discovery represents the earliest known grass fossils, and is congruent with previous estimations on grass origin and early evolution calibrated by oldest known fossil grasses, highlighting the role of fossils in molecular dating. This discovery also indicates deep-diverging grasses probably gained broad distribution across both Laurasian and Gondwanan continents during the Barremian (129-125 Ma).

                >https://academic.oup.com/nsr/article/5/5/721/4769666?login=false

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            where your info got tossed out is when rice pollen was found in dinosaur coprolites from the late jurassic in india and then found in sediments all over the world by the middle cretaceous.

            this moves the evolution of angiosperms back almost 100 million years before they appear as plant fossils. Grasses other than rice have also been found in the cretaceous, and were apparently global and dominant by the end of the cretaceous.

            palynological studies also indicate declines in ferns and conifers at the same rate that angiosperms spread. Again, all during the cretaceous and well before the first angiosperm fossils appear.

            The current view is that angiosperms, much like birds, evolved during the late jurassic but didn't really leave a global record until the early to mid cretaceous and left few if any body fossils until the end of the cretaceous.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Are you trying to write a 70's-80's scifi novel anon? Assuming you have the means to travel through time, Star Trek style replicators are already a thing that can be recharged with pond scum. It's only the mentally unstable antagonist who goes in search of meat

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >It's only the mentally unstable antagonist who goes in search of meat

      Yes, but it's fun.
      Obviously we could just eat nothing but prepackaged rations and be done with it, but that isn't adventurous. When one goes back in time they absolutely must eat Dinosaurs and then have a Dinosaur-Salad if possible (which it kind of sounds like it isn't). It's the law. I didn't invent it; I'm just following it.

      Nobody wants to go back in time and spend the whole adventure eating MREs. That's unbelievably lame.

      wild rice existed at the beginning of the Cretaceous, and had colonized the entire planet by late Cretaceous. Dinosaurs ate a lot of it. Based on pollen, it was pretty much identical to modern rice.

      >wild rice existed at the beginning of the Cretaceous

      I didn't even vaguely know about this. Neat. Thank you, Anon.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    grass exists but it's not great for eating.

    you can eat horsetails and fern fronds which are everywhere. Also the lower bark from pine trees, as well as the needles and sap.

    none of this stuff will keep you alive though. vegan diets aren't really possible without semi-modern agriculture. You're not going to find the right combination of plants to keep you alive all in one place unless you plant them there.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    wild rice existed at the beginning of the Cretaceous, and had colonized the entire planet by late Cretaceous. Dinosaurs ate a lot of it. Based on pollen, it was pretty much identical to modern rice.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Cycads were a dominant family of plants back then but the ones that survived to today really don’t want to be eaten. If all cycads were similar to the ones we have now it would take koala on eucalyptus levels of commitment to make them doable. They have big nutritious seeds but they’re full of cyanide and other neurotoxic bs. They’re a good candidate for domestication though.
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23725821/

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Cycads were a dominant family of plants back then
      nope

      You're thinking of the Triassic and Jurassic. Cycads were almost extinct by the late Cretaceous.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Has fruit been invented yet
    Fruit was only invented in 1745 by John Fruit, OP.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Bugs are the way to go for nourishment, especially grubs which are pact with protein.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    horsetails

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Literally nothing. Your digestive tract isn't made to eat them.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    asparagus

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The only flowering plant I know you could "safely" eat during Late Cretaceous are probably water lily and their seeds
    Even so you might still need to test them out to see if they're as edible as their modern counterparts

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    There are protocols to most safely experiment with plants which toxicity is unknown it involves exposing yourself to them in little steps, you can look that up

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ferns and moss are probably tree sized back then you can eat that
    Also big ass bugs
    You can try to slay one

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Also fruits didn’t came to be until millions of years later btw
      Vegetation wise you’d just be able to eat mosses, liverworts, ferns and the such

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >goes to a time lousy with 30ft turkey
    >asks what plants he can eat
    b***h pls, I'm eating fred flintstone ribs every night.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Because obviously I'm going to eat Dinosaurs. If you go back in time you're obligated to eat Dinosaurs (I suspect Hadrosaurs to be the most delicious). But the hypothetical expedition can't spend the whole time just cartoonishly oversized haunches of delectable Dinosaur meat or we'll suffer from Cretaceous-tier constipation.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        i suppose you have never heard of inuit. You can get all the vitamins necessary from organ meat and raw fat as well.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >organ meat
          I am going to force feed dinosaurs until their livers are about to explode and then just swim in dino foie gras.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Amazing how ever 20 year old on Wauf won't shut the frick up about the eskimos and amish but 0 of you ever go frick off to live with them. Odd.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            people who eat mostly animal products exist (eskimos), and they dont have constipation. They are fine. Not sure why amish are relevant in this discussion? Take your meds

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >They are fine
              Eskimos die in their 60s an all have atherosclerosis

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why exactly do you think they die in their 60s? lack of healthcare? lack of other modern resources/infrastructure? Harsh conditions?Constipation as mentioned in

                Because obviously I'm going to eat Dinosaurs. If you go back in time you're obligated to eat Dinosaurs (I suspect Hadrosaurs to be the most delicious). But the hypothetical expedition can't spend the whole time just cartoonishly oversized haunches of delectable Dinosaur meat or we'll suffer from Cretaceous-tier constipation.

                ? And what is the population sample, where, and when?
                Living to 60 in the fricking arctic sounds pretty good to me.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                he just said atherosclerosis. Which means heart attacks, strokes and same general mortality as most other people probably a few more suicides. The thing is they have even isolated genes that help them manage that diet and it's still not enough to mitigate the harm so significantly. Not that any of this even matters for something temporary or hypothetical as going back in time to a time period where you'd likely be dead in less than week let alone living 50+ years and flourishing to the point you need to amend your diet to be healthier than being alive at all.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You realize this is 2022, not 1400 right? Eskimos can access modern healthcare just like everyone else.

                >Be non-white fatass
                >This is B-B-B-BASTE!!
                >Be white fatass
                >LELELE SHART IN MART HEHEHE
                Why are 4gays so cringe?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So the data for eskimos not living past 60 is for those who love in cities and have access to modern healthcare and McDonald’s?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why the frick are you worried about data? Why are you trying to model your lives after fat ethnics?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Why are you trying to model your lives after fat ethnics?
                Who are you talking to? I don't think anyone in this thread said they wanted to live like eskimos or eat their diet. Schizo?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You, dickhead. EVERYONE on this moronic site only ever brings up the amish or eskimos to try to "prove" that their savage lifestyles are best, but none of you have the fricking balls to become one of them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I have literally never seen anyone try to claim living like an eskimo is superior to a normal lifestyle only that modern, urban lifestyles are shittier than what people had even 70 years ago.
                >savage
                Frick off city-slicker, living as an amish is objectively superior to living in your shithole

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I have literally never seen anyone try to claim living like an eskimo is superior
                Then you're from reddit. Have you spent your entire 2 weeks here just on this board?

                >omg everyone is saying this thing that no one in the thread is saying
                Meds. Now.

                Euthanasia, now. Your favorite country is even shilling it now. You don't want to be a bigot, now do you?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >omg everyone is saying this thing that no one in the thread is saying
                Meds. Now.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I get worse shits eating plants. Our guts are different.

        Just eat bugs and pine nuts

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >If you go back in time you're obligated to eat Dinosaurs
        And vice versa. You'd probably be eaten alive long before you'd have to worry about which plants you can eat.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >You'd probably be eaten alive long before you'd have to worry about which plants you can eat.

          If our Cromagnon ancestors could handle Sabretooth Tigers, Mammoths, Dire Wolves, and Shortfaced Bears with nothing but rocks and sharpened sticks. I think our current selves can handle Cretaceous Carnivores with our shotguns and carbines.

          Granted, it probably isn't going to be a fantastic idea to settle near or around any heavily wooded area. Because fairly certain if anybody *is* going to get killed by a Dinosaur it's probably going to be getting ambushed in the dense brush. I know people like to criticize movies and think they're smart, but a T-Rex or an Abelisaur isn't going to scream before it chases you- It'll absolutely quietly stalk or bumrush you like how a stork or a chicken does when it sees a mouse.

          Literally nothing. Your digestive tract isn't made to eat them.

          >Literally nothing.

          That's my initial fear, yeah.
          I've got a list going though: pine nuts, ginkgo seeds, water lilies, horsetails, fern shoots, etc. Lots of seeds, nuts, roots, there's probably edible mushrooms in this time period as well. It's weird to think about how much of our diet is grass and how much of what we eat or grow in gardens comes from like only a few dozen plants.

          ?Would wild Legumes/Beans have been invented yet does anybody think?

          https://i.imgur.com/tGX70C1.jpg

          EAT THE BUGS

          Anon reminds me: it might be a good idea to just sit and squirrel/rat watch to see what they're eating and follow their example.
          Semi-related, but does anybody know offhand the largest mammal in the Late Cretaceous?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Semi-related, but does anybody know offhand the largest mammal in the Late Cretaceous?
            Possibly Didelphodon. Basically a prehistoric opossum.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          They can try.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Fern fiddleheads, tree fern pith, and pine nuts. Maybe you could go through the process of making cycad seeds not poisonous as frick but good luck.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Oops

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Maybe you could go through the process of making cycad seeds not poisonous
              Lol extremely unlikely if they're anything like today. The fact that carnivores preyed upon Stegosaurs is a hint that cycads were nowhere near as toxic as they are today and the hard, toxic ones are just the survivors.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I'm eating all the carnivores to extinction just to piss you off.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    EAT THE BUGS

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you can gather pine nuts from the frickhuge conifers growing at the time, you're probably set. Just watch your head, those are big and heavy cones taking a long fall.
    Gingko trees would be thriving at the time as well, I reckon.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just boil the crap out of everything until you find something that doesn’t kill you or make you shit yourself.
    Flowering plants exist in the late Cretaceous so there are probably some edible stuff, even if it’s just roots or tubers.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *