Free Republic

Bearded fireworms have been found crawling around the Gulf Coast, and accidentally touching one can cause pain for hours and leave your skin sensitive for weeks. Surfers beware: Bearded fireworms, caterpillarlike critters that look like they are straight out of a horror movie are lurking in the sand on Texas beaches. "Your worst nightmares are washing up right now in the form of bearded fireworms!" the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies said in a post on Facebook on Aug. 14. The creatures, also known as bristle worms, can be dangerous. If they sting you, it can be...

The sea bed in the deep ocean during the Cambrian period was thought to have been inhospitable to animal life because it lacked enough oxygen to sustain it. But research published in the scientific journal Geology reveals the existence of fossilized worm tunnels dating back to the Cambrian period­­ 270 million years before the evolution of dinosaurs. The discovery, by USask professor Brian Pratt, suggests that animal life in the sediment at that time was more widespread than previously thought. The worm tunnels—burrows where worms lived and munched through the sediment—are invisible to the naked eye. But Pratt “had a...