Posted on 04/22/2005 12:50:39 PM PDT by demlosers
Spectacular specimen: This bug's a big one - 8 feet long - and New Mexico scientists nabbed some of its fossils
Think mosquitoes and millipedes are nasty?
Then don't look too deeply into New Mexico's past.
Today, you can squish the tiny bugs, but 300 million years ago, 8-foot-long millipedes were in control of the landscape, and humans weren't even a gleam in evolution's eye.
New Mexico is now a world record holder of such "exquisitely grotesque creatures," as one worker at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science calls them. Evidence of the largest arthropleura - its technical name - ever found was recovered by the museum on Friday.
"In today's world, you couldn't have a bug this big," said Spencer Lucas, paleontology curator at the museum. "This is basically the Tyrannosaurus of the Pennsylvanian period, millions of years before dinosaurs evolved. If you took a time machine back, you'd definitely want to check your sleeping bag for these suckers before getting in."
The Pennsylvanian time period lasted from 325 to 280 million years ago.
The museum has not found the bug itself. What it did find in a remote canyon near Española were the fossilized tracks of such a creature - which looks like a 3-by-8 speed bump with flat wings holding hundreds of nasty, ribbed, horseshoe-shaped feet.
"This is a very spectacular thing," said Adrian Hunt, director of the museum, who went out in the field with the team to recover it. "Think of it as a much bigger cross between a millipede and a centipede. It probably lived in swampy forest debris. Something like this has never been found before in the Western United States."
Evidence of the creatures has also been found in Nova Scotia and Scotland, but Jorg Schneider, an international expert on them and a paleontologist from the Freiberg Mining Academy in Germany, said New Mexico's find is evidence of the biggest arthropleura ever.
The second-largest creature was probably a few inches smaller than the one found in New Mexico. The New Mexico track is 39.3 centimeters wide, compared with the second-largest track, in Scotland, which is 36 centimeters wide, Schneider said.
Schnieder came to New Mexico for a two-week visit to look at the track and other New Mexico rocks from the same time period, he said.
"One question we have is, could such a large beast live on plant material only?" Schneider said. "In millipedes from the modern era, we know that scolopender (a type of millipede) is a predator. Possibly these big extinct versions also ate other animals. This was the top of the food chain - with no natural enemy - for about 40 to 50 million years during the Pennsylvanian."
The creatures might have been vegetarians, but their large size suggests they might have eaten early reptiles that later evolved into dinosaurs and mammals, Schneider said.
One favorite snack could have been the pelycosaur, a relative of the dimetrodon, a small, sail-backed lizard common in that age, Lucas said.
"We're still really not sure what they ate," Lucas said. "This guy was probably out patrolling the forest floor eating smaller bugs - which were still pretty big by today's standards - and maybe eating small vertebrates. New Mexico was near the equator then, and the land was much warmer and wetter."
Arthropleura died out at the end of the Pennsylvanian, probably because the amount of oxygen in the air was reduced from 30 percent during that time period to closer to the 21 percent we have today, Lucas said.
"They just couldn't survive at that size in modern air," Lucas said. "Their lungs weren't as evolved as ours. For an insect to get that big, you'd need to have a lot more oxygen in the air. These guys were an evolutionary dead end."
Millipedes and centipedes aren't directly related to arthropleura, he added, but might be from a related branch of the now-extinct creature's family tree, Lucas added.
"Breathing, food, locomotion are all problematic for a bug that big," Lucas said. "When the world changed, they just couldn't adapt."
You let them leave???
The first time, yes. I guess thats the mistake......
Most new earthers don't
Right.
Now let's work on your pick up lines, one that works especially well is:
"Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?"...
How about "which smells best, chloroform or Hoppes #9"?
Ooooooooo!
The Student has become the Master...
Must be a bad case of dishumor here tonight.
Dude! The Beetles!
She loves you yeah yeah yeah
That made my testicles draw up.
Maybe it has a good personality.
Egads. I suppose the thick, tough, leather-like skin of the Ted-o-saurus ensured it's longevity.
ping4later
Maybe it's rich.
No, but I have read his hypothesis. And, it defies physics as we know it. Have you studied physics, or are you simply going to take the good doctor's word for it because you and he both happen to be young Earth creationists?
You - Criticizing w/o having read Dr. Brown's work
The TalkOrigins Link - Generalizes & exaggerates
The Result - You don't fully understand Dr. Brown's theory, and your criticism is misplaced.
I've read your posts on this subject before. You often bully your way through trying to intimidate others with your "superior" knowledge. How do your credentials stack up to Dr. Brown's?
If you're convinced you're right and he's wrong, sign a debate agreement and debate him. He's available. Are you?
I always marvel at the shapes the fallen angels took when they followed Satan to earth.
Just a theory... I have more on that line... I think the same spawn have morphed into Godless Libertarian evolutionist posters on FR...
Again just a theory... take it or leave it..
I haven't read Einstein's work either, but I know what it says.
The TalkOrigins Link - Generalizes & exaggerates
In what way? Brown says that the waters came up from the ground and rained down on Earth. That's a pretty close synapsis, right? Now, Mr. "I took high school physics," how does the good doctor account for the energy required? I'm sure, since you understand physics and have read his material, that you could give us a short overview. If you don't, I'm going to assume you can't and therefore the good doctor never did attempt to account for it. If you try to pass the buck to me, I'm going to assume the same thing.
In other words, I don't believe TalkOrigins in any way "generalizes and exaggerates" the case at all. I think you're just handwaving away something that you and Dr. Brown cannot explain.
Now, physics genius, tell us: how much energy was required, and how much was available? I mean, since you claim your source isn't generalizing or exaggerating, surely this data is available, right? You wouldn't post a factless claim, would you? You being a physics genius and all.
When will you be scheduling your debate with Dr. Brown?
Energy doesn't just disappear; that 800 million Terawatts of energy per day is going to hang around in the form of heat. And this amount of heat is being pumped into the system every day for 40 days. Where does Dr. Brown say this heat is going to go? It won't radiate out into space fast enough.
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