Days are definitely getting longer (than 70 million years ago)

What would you do with an extra week every year?

What if to get that extra week, you lost a half-hour every day?

If you want to make that trade, just travel back in time. Seventy million years back, before we had Starbucks or McDonald's. A long time ago.

A study in the American Geophysical Union journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology (for which I don't payleo for a subscription, get it?) reports that the Earth spun faster at the end of the time of the dinosaurs than it does now. It rotated seven more times every year, giving the ancient years 372 days, but shortening the days to 23½ hours.

The information comes from a study of fossil mollusk shells from the late Cretaceous at the end of the Mesozoic Era.

(Admission: I copied and pasted that information, to be sure I spelled the words correctly. Including the word "the.")

Anyway, scientists were able to use the fact that the mollusks have daily growth rings (really. Isn't that amazing?). Scientists used lasers to create slices and then count the growth rings. Long story short, that method reveals the number of days in a year and the length of a day.

There was a bunch of other stuff in the report, including words like "photosynthetic symbionts," "bivalves" and "animal," which led me to think about the drummer on the Sesame Street band,  Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, which has nothing to do with this column.

But the basics are important: A long time ago, the days were shorter and  years had an extra week. Kind of the opposite of the old saying about raising young kids: The days are long, the years are short.

Also there was this: The study showed that the ocean was much, much, much warmer 70 million years ago. The ocean would exceed 100 degrees in the summer and was often 85 degrees  in the winter. In other words, there was little need for a hot tub in the old (shorter) days.

So travel back 70 million years and here's the problems you'd have to solve:

You'd have to figure out how to navigate a day that's 30 minutes shorter. Would you ask to work less? Sleep less? Skip a shower? This wouldn't be a one-day thing, it would be an everyday thing. Seven days a week. Three-hundred-seventy-two days a year.

That's another problem. You'd have to change some sayings. Instead of 24-7-365, you'd have to tell someone that you're committed to something 23½-7-372. That might take some getting used to.

On the other hand, the year would be a week longer. Do you think employers would add a week of vacation? Me neither. Just more work days, I guess. (A conclusion partly based on watching "The Flintstones," which was set sometime near the era covered. Fred and Barney had to work a lot of days.)

For me, the shocking part of the article came near the end:

"The length of a year has been constant over Earth’s history, because Earth’s orbit around the Sun does not change. But the number of days within a year has been shortening over time because days have been growing longer. The length of a day has been growing steadily longer as friction from ocean tides, caused by the Moon’s gravity, slows Earth’s rotation."

There you have it. If you thought days longer the past year, you were right. Every year, days get longer. Over 70 million years, we've added a half-hour a day. It may be microscopic, but days are longer now than they were when we were young.

That's something you can count on, 23½-7-372.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.