Posted on 03/11/2015 12:36:46 PM PDT by C19fan
A trio of paleontologists has announced the discovery of a fossil belonging to a new species of ancient arthropod that rivals the largest ever found. They detail their finding in Wednesday's publication of the journal Nature.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, arthropods, which include modern-day spiders, insects, and crustaceans, were much larger, and we're not talking the size of a small dog. An extinct millipede called Arthropleura reached up to 8.5 feet in length, making it the largest land invertebrate ever known to exist. Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, which extended 8.2 feet, dwelled in the water (pictured right).
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
The first apex predator.
I posted this a few months ago about palentologists identified a cousin of Anomalocaris that was bigger but a filter feeder.
That Lobster is a stone crab
Which is why I said I prefer...
...wait for it...
.
.
...crab.
I don't know about that ... There are some pretty hefty invertebrates on the GOP side of the aisle in Congress.
It wasn’t just extra oxygen. The key that is hardly ever mentioned is that the atmospheric pressure must have been much higher as well. High enough, in fact, that the atmosphere’s pressure allowed extremely large creatures to live on land, due to buoyancy, like they still do below the oceans.
If you just had more oxygen in the atmosphere, but the same pressure, then creatures would not have grown much larger than they do today. They would have reached their full size faster, but they couldn’t grow much larger.
Sorry, but if you even DOUBLED the air density - i.e., the number of molecules of N2 and O2 per ccm - that would only increase it from about 1.4 gm/liter to 2.8 gm/liter. An animal weighing 100 kg and having a density of about 1 gm/ccm (like a human) would experience a reduction in perceived weight (due to the added buoyancy) of only 140 grams. That is negligible.
If you increased the air density by 10X, that STILL only reduces the apparent weight of a 100-kg human by 1.4 kg - or by 1.4%.
Regards,
“Sorry, but if you even DOUBLED the air density...”
Notice I said much higher? Even doubling the pressure is not enough to allow the size of terrestrial animals (and extremely large fliers) we see in the fossil record, so it must have been much higher than even that. I’d guess we are talking on the order of several hundred atmospheres, at least.
OTOH, the partial pressure of oxygen would double.
There would be roughly half again as much available oxygen due to the 21 to 30% increase, TIMES TWO due to the pressure increase.
These critters were 3X turbocharged!
To #16. You’ve got Hillary’s head on the wrong end of the cow.
That's one whale of a mistake.
To #16. You’ve got Hillary’s head on the wrong end of the cow.
Reposting> Don’t know if the original attempt succeeded.
Never had a problem with a typewriter!
The infamous Wyoming jackalope!
Ah yes, the Keith Olbermann tattoo for horses. I remember them well. Put Ed Schulz on the other side, a sort of “turn the other cheek” effect.
#30. The whale ate a chair. That’s all.
Looks like that poor cow has its legs on backwards.
Try mixing high pressure oxygenated atmosphere with combustibles!
Neurotoxic also for scuba at 160 kPa oxygen partial pressure.
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