Giant Bugs a Thing of the Past, Study Suggests
National Geographic News | November 21, 2007 | Hope Hamashige
Posted on 11/22/2007 8:27:40 AM PST by ricks_place
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1929315/posts
sidebars from there:
Scientists find fossil of enormous bug
AP via YAHOO! | 11-20-07 | Thomas Wagner
Posted on 11/20/2007 10:45:12 PM EST by Pharmboy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1928675/posts
Scientists Uncover Fossil of Biggest Bug Ever at 8 Feet Long
Fox News | 11-21-07
Posted on 11/21/2007 1:36:51 PM EST by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1928960/posts
390-million-year-old scorpion fossil — biggest bug known
Eurekalert! | 11/21/07 | Janet Rettig Emanuel
Posted on 11/21/2007 5:29:48 PM EST by Teflonic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1929079/posts
I personally think falling oxygen levels was the primary driver of shrinking insects. I know that considerably larger insects have been grown in labs.
Its the summer of the dragonflies here in southern Michigan. Hot and dry with dragonflies of all kinds everywhere.
There had to be gravity attenuation of some sort. The largest contemporary land mammal is the elephant. Nothing can grow larger and still retain mobility. Giraffes are at the upper limit of neck length. A sauropod 10 times larger with a long neck could neither pump blood to it’s head without experiencing capillary leakage due to the pressures involved in pumping a viscous liquid 20’+ high, but neck tendons could not support horizontal browsing in Earth’s present gravity.