Posted on 01/27/2017 5:59:49 PM PST by JimSEA
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered a 100-million-year-old insect preserved in amber with a triangular head, almost-alien and "E.T.-like" appearance and features so unusual that it has been placed in its own scientific "order" -- an incredibly rare event.
There are about 1 million described species of insects, and millions more still to be discovered, but every species of insect on Earth has been placed in only 31 existing orders. Now there's one more.
The findings have been published in the journal Cretaceous Research and describe this small, wingless female insect that probably lived in fissures in the bark of trees, looking for mites, worms or fungi to feed on while dinosaurs lumbered nearby. It was tiny, but scary looking.
"This insect has a number of features that just don't match those of any other insect species that I know," said George Poinar, Jr., an emeritus professor of entomology in the OSU College of Science and one of the world's leading experts on plant and animal life forms found preserved in the semi-precious stone amber.
"I had never really seen anything like it. It appears to be unique in the insect world, and after considerable discussion we decided it had to take its place in a new order."
Perhaps most unusual, Poinar said, was a triangular head with bulging eyes, with the vertex of the right triangle located at the base of the neck. This is different from any other known insect, and would have given this species the ability to see almost 180 degrees by turning its head sideways.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Jesus made all that stuff. It's in the Bible!
You’re a little late to the party dude. I made the comment yesterday. You can look on down thread to see further comments, and then shut up, because I don’t care.
Make stupid comments, get razzed for it. Your idiocy will be preserved on the internet forever. Enjoy ...
Stupid comments?
The subject of this thread is about as stupid as anything can get.
Calling a deformed earwig a “new species” pretty much takes the cake, don’t you think?
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Praying mantis have triangular heads too...
Well given that Jesus aka God is the source of all creativity, I can’t disagree. /no sarc
Fair enough, That sadi, I started out as an engineer. But even then I took time to experiment (do the math, make a hypothesis, test, prove or disprove, rinse and repeat). Have moved onto other things, but still do some real science (right now in the quantum mechanics space). Just part of who I am...
"Calling a deformed earwig a “new species” pretty much takes the cake, don’t you think?"
OK, let's start here: not everybody "gets" that people like editor-surveyor have taken on themselves the awesome responsibility of defining for the rest of us just what is, and what is not, "science".
They say "science" is only what you can see & detect today and anything from the past is "historical science", meaning myth, religion & pseudo-science.
So, for example, if a scientist finds a piece of amber with an insect inside and estimates from the surrounding geology that it's 100 million years old, well, that's pseudo-science and religion, since according to our editor-surveyors, nobody can really know what actually happened in the distant past.
Second, editor-surveyor doesn't grasp the significance of the fact that this strange looking critter was not classified as a separate "species", not even as a separate "genus" or "family", but as a whole new "order" of insects, as different from other insects as, for example, cockroaches are from, say, butterflies.
Yes, in recent years there have been major revisions to some biological classifications, based on DNA similarities and dissimilarities showing how closely or distantly species are related, and no DNA survived in that ancient amber.
But the analysis is more than just myth, religion & pseudo-science.
People who study insects know they are not looking at something found alive today, and there are two different specimens, meaning one is not just a freak of nature.
You can lump me in with editor-surveyor since I don’t believe this garbage. I’m tired of these “scientists” telling me they know what went on 100 million years ago. Total BS!
They are “scientists” and us peons are supposed to believe them? More fake news.
If BS = "beautiful science", then of course you're correct, otherwise, not so much.
Science is built on evidence and theories, which in the case of geology, physics, astronomy, biology & other disciplines, point to Earth being billions of years old.
Of course you can deny that evidence all you wish, just don't call your own theories "science".
But you need to grasp the basic concept that science (real science) is not about "belief" or even "Truth".
That's because, at best science is a model of reality, nothing more.
So imagine a really nice model, say of the USS Constitution:
Beautiful, right?
But is it real, is it Truth, can you "believe" in it?
No, of course not, instead we might admire it's beauty, we could even verify it's dimensions are to scale, but we would never "believe" the model is the real USS Constitution.
By its very nature, it cannot be, and so with science itself.
Science is a model of reality as we see it, based on evidence and theories.
It can be verified by checking its claims, but it is still just a model.
As such, there is no "belief" in it, it's all just conditional acceptance, until a better model can be verified.
And in this example, even the real thing is not the actual USS Constitution -- because after many rebuildings & restorations, almost nothing is now left of what it once was.
In that sense, even the real USS Constitution is but a life-sized model of the original.
Sure, you can "believe" it if you wish, but nobody believes it is still the mighty defender of freedom on the seas it once was.
Just as nobody believes that science itself is the Creator of whatever reality it reports to us.
Models do not require "belief".
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