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Scientists recreate the head of this ancient 9-foot-long bug
AP News ^ | October 09, 2024 | CHRISTINA LARSON

Posted on 10/10/2024 4:30:12 AM PDT by Red Badger

WASHINGTON (AP) — As if the largest bug to ever live – a monster nearly 9 feet long with several dozen legs – wasn’t terrifying enough, scientists could only just imagine what the extinct beast’s head looked like.

That’s because many of the fossils of these creatures are headless shells that were left behind when they molted, squirming out of their exoskeletons through the head opening as they grew ever bigger — up to 8 to 9 feet (2.6 meters) and more than 100 pounds (50 kilograms).

Now, scientists have produced a mug shot after studying fossils of juveniles that were complete and very well preserved, if not quite cute.

The giant bug’s topper was a round bulb with two short bell-shaped antennae, two protruding eyes like a crab, and a rather small mouth adapted for grinding leaves and bark, according to new research published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Called Arthropleura, these were arthropods -- the group that includes crabs, spiders and insects – with features of modern-day centipedes and millipedes. But some of them were much, much bigger, and this one was a surprising mix.

“We discovered that it had the body of a millipede, but head of a centipede,” said study co-author and paleobiologist Mickael Lheritier at the University Claude Bernard Lyon in Villeurbanne, France.

(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...


TOPICS: History; Outdoors; Pets/Animals; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: centipede; cryptobiology; godsgravesglyphs; millipede; paleontology
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To: SunkenCiv

There were dragonflies that had 4 feet wingspans..................I wonder what else was crawling around in the Precambrian swamps?.............


21 posted on 10/10/2024 5:12:18 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Larry Lucido

Or they couldn’t get a ticket on the boat.


22 posted on 10/10/2024 5:15:36 AM PDT by waredbird
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To: Red Badger

How long before these are cloned and released in red states?


23 posted on 10/10/2024 5:39:37 AM PDT by FLNittany (Autotune is jealous of Karen Carpenter)
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To: Red Badger

AAAAAHHHHH!!!

(thanks for all the future nightmares...)

well, might be good boiled and dipped in melted butte.


24 posted on 10/10/2024 5:48:05 AM PDT by epluribus_2
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To: Red Badger

I bet you could ride it!


25 posted on 10/10/2024 6:01:07 AM PDT by larrytown (A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. Then they graduate...)
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To: SauronOfMordor
The size of this thing is an indication that Earth’s atmosphere was different in ancient times, with a higher oxygen content.

Yup.

A Chicxulub-sized event rings the planet like a bell, any fault that is near its critical strain is apt to let loose.

Doctors and coroners have a term, coup contrecoup, that means damage to the opposite side of the brain from where the skull was struck.

Imagine you are standing on the spot exactly on the opposite side from the strike. The shock waves race around the globe and come together (focus, if you will) right under your feet!

On a lower gravity bodies such as the moon, big impacts have delivered sufficient coup contrecoup force to jet material off into space.

I don’t doubt that nearby magma would be squirted up through the resulting shattered bedrock.

Add to that the fact that Chicxulub was a shallow water strike and the surrounding sea formed a wall around the white hot crater as it attempted to flood in. It was like a 120 mile wide rocket nozzle jetting vaporized seawater and any entrained atmosphere into space. Global atmospheric pressure and sea level drop permanently. As the crater was quenched, the force of the boiling reduced, and the remaining flood of sea water and air steam-cleaned half the planet.

It was a bad day.

On land nothing larger than a house cat survived. I suspect all the surviving animals were burrow dwellers or nesters, animals already used to breathing lower oxygen content than their larger peers. The thinned atmosphere was a final insult to the bigger surface dwellers.

26 posted on 10/10/2024 6:13:49 AM PDT by null and void (Illegal aliens are put up in fine hotels, Americans in Appalacha are left to starve in the elements)
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To: SauronOfMordor

They all died off as a result of Globul Schwarming.

We need to get those bugs back. They are bioweapons against lefty liberals!


27 posted on 10/10/2024 6:43:54 AM PDT by Candor7 (Ask not for whom the Trump Trolls,He trolls for thee!),<img src="" width=500</img><a href="">tag</a>)
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To: SauronOfMordor

also the air pressure was much higher.

Study hyperbaric therapy. You will know one reason why we used to live longer, and animals and plants used to be bigger.


28 posted on 10/10/2024 6:45:14 AM PDT by BereanBrain
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To: PIF
Oxygen may not have accounted for the size. — Perhaps gravity was less?

Yes, the earth was much smaller back then

29 posted on 10/10/2024 6:46:55 AM PDT by Mr. K (Trump 2024)
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To: larrytown

It would take a really big shoe to squash that thing.


30 posted on 10/10/2024 6:59:52 AM PDT by FirstFlaBn
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To: Red Badger

Wuhan lab looking for a new project.


31 posted on 10/10/2024 7:11:58 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from withinE? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this💩? 🚫💉! 🇮🇱👍!)
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To: Red Badger
Red....Edibility. They do not discuss edibility. You wonder, cooked would they they have tasted like Shrimp or chicken? (Or Crab.)

No doubt someone will try to get a grant from the WEF to try and find some remote genetic descendant and try to resurrect these as menu items. (I have shellfish allergies so its not something that would ever appear on in my grocery list! )

If you used these as bait what sort of a rig would you need to fish? What would you be fishing for and where? So many questions!

32 posted on 10/10/2024 7:16:18 AM PDT by Pete from Shawnee Mission ( )
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To: Mr. K

Yes, the earth was much smaller back then


Or it was a moon of Saturn - where all the land mass was concentrated in one location facing away from the planet, where gravity would have been much less. Also, a time when the Moon had not yet arrived.


33 posted on 10/10/2024 7:20:36 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: Red Badger

I guess that could feed a family of four for quite a while. I wonder if Bill Gates is aware.


34 posted on 10/10/2024 7:23:00 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam (I'm voting for the felon with the pierced ear. )
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To: Red Badger

Cavemen with shotguns!


35 posted on 10/10/2024 7:42:24 AM PDT by telescope115 (I NEED MY SPACE!!! 🔭)
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To: All

with a brain mass approaching that of a democrat presidential candidate...


36 posted on 10/10/2024 7:56:01 AM PDT by SteveH
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To: Red Badger

Should feed lots of wokesters.....barbeque...yeah!

Note how the scientist said that by using the estimations of the juveniles head he could figure out what the adult head looked like ..”close enough”...how would the scientist know it was close enough?


37 posted on 10/10/2024 8:30:14 AM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and harder to find.)
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To: Red Badger

Tastes kinda like spotted owl.


38 posted on 10/10/2024 8:32:09 AM PDT by Libloather (Why do climate change hoax deniers live in mansions on the beach?)
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To: Red Badger

Will they be bringing them back as the bugs we are supposed to eat? With the caveat being that we must catch them ourselves?


39 posted on 10/10/2024 8:37:21 AM PDT by Robert DeLong
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To: Red Badger

I pray they never find its DNA.


40 posted on 10/10/2024 8:43:21 AM PDT by Revel
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