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I hope someone who actually knows their stuff can fill in the details but here's something amazing: it's possible the remains of a subducted plate (known as a "slab") to stick around as a distinct entity within the mantle for an extremely long time.

A diagram on that page shows a model of the "Farallon Slab" believed to lie beneath North America.

Also "grog particles don't shrink" does not explain anything because clay partials don't shrink either. They condense by sliding together like u/Indemnity4 explained. I assume the grog particles must block some of the clay particles from sliding together and affect shrinkage that way, but that is only an unexpert guess.

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This may be useful. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coastlines-of-Australia-and-NG-S-50-000-years-ago-After-the-initial-spread-of-H-sapiens_fig1_6336100

The unique fauna here goes back further, it's a result of the breakup of Pangaea, then Gondwana.

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Handy side note: aortic aneurysms occuring in the area of this aorta/nerve arrangement often result in the person’s voice becoming hoarse. Along with other symptoms this can help differentiate chest pain associated with heart attacks from chest pain secondary to aneurysm / dissection.

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Don't leave us in suspense, what does it taste like?

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The bones of birds are not completely empty. They are lighter in weight and have air pockets. The bone marrow in birds, like that of other animals, produces red and white blood cells, but the location and distribution of the marrow is different due to the unique structure of bird bones. HSCs are primarily found in the bone marrow of birds, which is a spongy tissue found within the bones. However, some studies have suggested that HSCs may be present in other tissues in certain bird species, such as the liver and spleen.

You mean New Guinea I suspect?

Because sand particles are larger and more rigid than clay particles. Sand helps to create gaps or voids between the clay particles, which act as channels for the water to escape as it dries. This allows the clay to shrink more evenly, which reduces the possibility of cracking.

For the obvious case, there is less material shrinking. If the mixture is 50% grog, then clay that otherwise shrank by 10% should at most shrink by 5% since the sand won't shrink at all.

> I’m sorry could you explain that more please? There is no universal “now”?

The technical term is "relativity of simultaneity"

Consider two events A and B that happen at "about" the same time, separated by a great distance. They are close enough to simultaneous that light from A cannot get to the location of B until after B has happened, and light from B arrives at A after A has happened.

Let's assume that A occurs at 1230 GMT on 11-Mar-2023, and is a political speech given worldwide coverage made in Scotland. And let's assume that B occurs at 1500 GMT on 11-Mar-2023 by Earth reckoning, and is a critical failure of the Voyager-1 probe which is currently 21 light hours away from Earth.

Observers of both events can calculate the time of each, and deduce which was 'first'.

However, these observers will not necessarily agree with each other.

An observer on Earth who notes both events will conclude, after light arrives 21 hours after Voyager's incident, that the speech was made 2½ hours before the probe failed.

But an alien probe moving through the solar system at 99.98% of lightspeed which saw both events might well conclude that the speech occurred 7 hours after the probe failed.

Both would be correct.

It's a completely counterintuitive mess, but the math checks out on it.