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 ...
High pressure, yes, but not “oxygenated”. We are only talking perhaps a few percent more oxygen in the atmosphere than there is today.
Thank you for doing the math on that one. Subject matter just alittle too dense to respond.
I am ignorant.
Is there a method of determining ancient atmospheric pressure from the fossil record?
Not directly, no. However, there are terrestrial (and flying) animals that are in the fossil record who demonstrate that the atmosphere must have been radically different by their anatomy. They are either too large to have lived in our current atmosphere (the large sauropods) or too large to have flown (the pteradons).
Some scientists have proposed other theories to account for the anatomical problems, such as proposing that the sauropods spent all their time wading in water to alleviate their massive weight, but those theories do not hold up. Sauropods had terrestrial feet, and they lived in areas that didn’t have enough water for them to constantly wade in. The only theory that seems to solve both issues and is tenable is that the atmospheric pressure was enough to give these creatures buoyancy.
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