Posted on 05/03/2011 9:41:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Almost 50 million years ago, ants the size of hummingbirds roamed what is now Wyoming, a new fossil discovery reveals. These giant bugs may have crossed an Arctic land bridge between Europe and North America during a particularly warm period in Earth's history.
At about 2 inches (5 cm) long, the specimen is a "monstrously big ant," said Bruce Archibald, a paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who reported the discovery today (May 3) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Though fossils of loose giant ant wings have been found before in the United States, this is the first known full-body specimen.
The fossil ant is from a well-known fossil site in Wyoming called the Green River Formation, but it had been sitting in a drawer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Archibald said. When a curator showed him the fossil, Archibald said, he knew he was looking at something exciting. ..
"I immediately recognized it and said, 'Oh my god, this is a giant ant and it looks like it's related to giant ants that are known from about this time in Germany.'"
...
Monster ant
Archibald dubbed the new ant Titanomyrma lubei -- "titan" for its size, "myrma" for the Greek, "myrmex," or ant, and "lubei" for the fossil collector who discovered the specimen, Louis Lube. ..
Ants are tough bugs -- some can even create rafts out of their own bodies to survive floods. But a look at modern large ants showed Archibald and his colleagues that T. lubei very likely needed a warm climate to live, similar to modern-day giant ants. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
IOW, guys like you couldn’t hang in a thread like that because their comments don’t survive.
You went to the Religion moderators wanting a "Scientism" category, arguing that it was hypothetically possible for such a religion to exist, so there should be a category for it, even though nobody could find a single person who claimed to subsribe to such a religion. Then you tried to get the science threads posted there to "prevent flame wars". That never happened.
So you got your "Scientism" category in Religion, and it never got used. That means that it did absolutley nothing to prevent the flame wars.
Buy by your own account it was a success because you got that category created. "Success" means having acheived the desired objective. Since failing to have done anything to prevent the flame wars hasn't been any obstacle to the success of the endeavor that must not have been the objective. The real objective was getting that category created for propaganda value. It accomplished absolutely nothing, but you did manage to waste a bunch of other people's time getting it. Congratulations. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Not hard to see why he might freak out, though I hear they’re harmless.
Thread jacker.
Thread Jacker?
Warning: reading this thread can give one a headache!
This same Denver museum is heading up this summer’s continued dig of the Aspen mammoth.
He's dead, Jim.
er, BradyLS, that is.
Especially those televangelists shouting "Send me money for your prayer cloth and miracle."
(thank you very much!)
They are real here in NM. Also called jerusalem crickets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_cricket
You just admitted the whole “wanting to help prevent flame wars in the science threads” song and dance you were doing was a farce.
***Baloney, horsefeathers, and
01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00001101 00001010
Fun Binary Converter < http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ >
The thing worked, it cut down the flame wars on those sensitive subjects. What I casually noticed on those threads was whose comments were getting deleted, and basically who was responsible for the flamewars: it was the science religionists. So, now anytime someone wants to discuss a science subject like crevo but weed out the 01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00001101 00001010, they can set up one of those threads.
And I don't need your pissy little converter program.
("01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00001101 00001010" -split " "| % {[char][convert]::toint32($_,2)}) -join ""
bullshit
Now you’re just lying.
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
I’ll let you have the last word on this thread, but keep in mind that the lurkers know how little you actually contribute to positive discussion on such threads.
SELF-EVIDENT TECHNIQUE
Name Calling or Substitutions of Names or Moral Labels.
This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable.
You can find the rest of the manual posted here.
"Scientism", anyone?
That movie scared me so bad when I was a child, I never forgot it.
I saw a potato bug once under a bush and I thought I’d lose my lunch. They are way more ugly and threatening looking in real life. The skin colored body parts make them even more unnerving.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.