Posted on 05/03/2011 9:41:13 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Almost 50 million years ago, ants the size of hummingbirds roamed what is now Wyoming, a new fossil discovery reveals. These giant bugs may have crossed an Arctic land bridge between Europe and North America during a particularly warm period in Earth's history.
At about 2 inches (5 cm) long, the specimen is a "monstrously big ant," said Bruce Archibald, a paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who reported the discovery today (May 3) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Though fossils of loose giant ant wings have been found before in the United States, this is the first known full-body specimen.
The fossil ant is from a well-known fossil site in Wyoming called the Green River Formation, but it had been sitting in a drawer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Archibald said. When a curator showed him the fossil, Archibald said, he knew he was looking at something exciting. ..
"I immediately recognized it and said, 'Oh my god, this is a giant ant and it looks like it's related to giant ants that are known from about this time in Germany.'"
...
Monster ant
Archibald dubbed the new ant Titanomyrma lubei -- "titan" for its size, "myrma" for the Greek, "myrmex," or ant, and "lubei" for the fossil collector who discovered the specimen, Louis Lube. ..
Ants are tough bugs -- some can even create rafts out of their own bodies to survive floods. But a look at modern large ants showed Archibald and his colleagues that T. lubei very likely needed a warm climate to live, similar to modern-day giant ants. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Any fossils of Rodents of Unusual Size?
I used to live in Wyoming, and I saw those buggers all the time when I was drinking/
In New Mexico I’ve heard they have giant bugs called “children of the Earth”. I don’t know if they are legendary, or real.
I know you’ve been *pinged* twice already, but I just wanted to let you know there’s no real reason to put this one out there-—I’ve already read it. *<];-’)
That’s funny, cause I didn’t start seeing shit until I quit...
Those tater bugs are all over and they’re completely harmless. We have plenty here in SoCal.
Probably why there are no fossil picnic sites found.
Ants are probably by far the greatest number of individual animals on Earth. They live everywhere, except the universe likes cruel irony.
No ants in ANTartica!!!
Amongst the plant or plantlike species, the greatest population is prochlorococcus. A marine micro-photosynthetic bacteria. Worldwide, in the oceans, there are probably 1-100 billion billion billion of them. Estimate are that they produce 20% of the oxygen on the planet.
And nobody ever heard or saw or thought of them until about 1978.
I wonder what else is undiscovered.
Hey noobie, keep your new earth bs on one of the threads in the religion forum.
That was the scariest dang episode of the Outer Limits ever.
You know eastfork, I really thought you were smarter than that, I guess I had given your intellect to much credit, I promise, I won;’t do that again.
That thing is “shotgun worthy”...
Being a noob how could you possibly know anything about me and if you do know me then you must be a retread, which is it?
Yes, because we don’t tolerate differing views here. Right?
"I don't believe they exist."
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