Posted on 09/30/2005 9:17:27 AM PDT by bigmac0707
A scientist has described a spider that was trapped and preserved in amber 20 million years ago.
Palaeontologist Dr David Penney, of the University of Manchester, found the 4cm long by 2cm wide fossil during a visit to a museum in the Dominican Republic.
Since the discovery two years ago, he has used droplets of blood in the amber to reveal the age of the specimen.
It is thought to be the first time spider blood has been found in amber and scientists hope to extract its DNA.
Dr Penney, of the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, said he had used the blood droplets to trace how, when and where the spider died.
It is a new species from the Filistatidae family commonly found in South America and the Caribbean.
Dr Penney believes it was climbing up a tree 20 million years ago when it was hit on the head by fast flowing resin, became engulfed in the resin and died.
He claims the shape and position of the blood droplets revealed which direction the spider was travelling in and which of its legs broke first.
"It's amazing to think that a single piece of amber with a single spider in it can open up a window into what was going on 20 million years ago," he said.
"By analysing the position of the spider's body in relation to the droplets of blood in the amber we are able to determine how it died, which direction it was travelling in and even how fast it was moving."
He first saw the fossil during a visit to the Museo del Ambar Dominicano, in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
Dr Penney reports his findings in the latest issue of the journal Palaeontology.
you creos...! well, my arguements are based on science; yours on the kind of emperic evidence usually found in L. Ron Hubbard theonovellas. Have fun dismissing radiodecay dating. For those who build on the knowledge of others who subscribe to the disciplines of science there is a level playing field for observing the universe. You ID creos can just invent things as you go along and then throw up your hands when things get too complicated for your feeble minds and declare that it all must be due to the magician in the sky.
LOL
Very good.
Do evolutionists even believe spiders existed 20 million years ago. That spider looks exactly like the spiders of today.
That's probably because the outside of clams IS DEAD for the life of the clam.
This is not true; in 5700 years, 1/2 would be gone; in another 5700 years, half of the remaining half, etc, etc until it becomes too little to reliably sample.
There are other radio dating mehods that have more range, but less accuracy.
Who is L. Ron Hubbard?
LOL - I thought it looked like a recent spider, too.
Spiders have existed for 400 million years, changed a lot during this time though.
The spiders of that family that exist today are tiny bark dwellers -- 4mm.
This was 4cm.
As stated, the numbers were arbitary just to show that the process worked for longer than 11,700 years or whatever the question was.
Just for accurracy, the actual reference level is 1.18×10-12 C-14 atom per C-12 atom (one C-14 for 848 billion C-12 atoms). The better-equipped radiocarbon dating laboratories using the conventional gas or scintillation counting technique are capable of detecting concentrations of C-14 as low as 1.4×10-15 (one atom of C-14 per 700 thousand billion C-12 atoms) --- giving an outside accepted range of 55,000 years(although some go higher, and most say 40,000, due to contamination).
But they are still spiders.
Cmon - you know the scientology guy - used to write sci-fi short stories and then decided there is much more $$$ in religion so he created Dianetics and its umbrella Scientology.
If the universe is too boggling for creos' minds perhaps it is all the design of of the Thetans who inhabit L Ron Hubbard's comic books?
"But they are still spiders."
Who said they were not?
Evo: Here is a transitional series from reptile to mammal
Anti-evo response: So what? That isn't evolution. They are still vertebrates.
Not to be confused with the "dino blood in amber"
from the movie "Jurasaic Park"! <>g<>
I remember reading that carbon dating breaks down after a certain amount of time. I don't remember whether it becomes completely worthless or whether it just increase the range of the number of years it detects.
The could do a control test on Helen Thomas.
20 million year old spider? Wow. The web must be getting really dusty.
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