Posted on 01/27/2006 7:56:52 AM PST by theFIRMbss
SALT LAKE CITY -- A scorpion lived for 15 months without food or water inside the plaster mold of a dinosaur fossil, breaking free only when a scientist broke open the mold.
Don DeBlieux, a paleontologist for the Utah Geological Survey, said he was sawing open the plaster mold when the scorpion wriggled from a crack in a sandstone block.
...The scorpion "must have been hanging out in a crack the day we plastered him," DeBlieux said Thursday.
He discovered the two-inch critter on Jan. 5 after spending two months carefully removing the plaster mold. DeBlieux said he'll spend more than 500 hours cutting the fossilized skull out of sandstone using tiny pneumatic jackhammers. ... Under other circumstances, the scorpion might have met an untimely end, but DeBlieux said he wanted respected the creature's will to survive. He set the scorpion free in a field on the west side of Salt Lake City.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
I bet he was hungry.
15 months? Bah. I still would've stepped on it . . . .
Hope the little critter wasn't claustrophobic.
How is this possible?
That is just one more creepy, crawling thing with claws and a stinger set free in Utah. I hope they all crawl back under their rock.
As he exited the fossil, the Scorpion was heard to say: "Here I am, rock me like a hurricane."
I think he should have fed him and then set him free!
Alligators sometimes go a year without eating.
Scorpions can live a long time without food or water. They're pretty sturdy critters. 15 months is quite a while, but I'm not at all surprised.
Finding a scorpion in a sandstone rock containing a fossil -- pretty cool.
Findind a scorpion in a shoe with your foot --- priceless.
Pretty amazing!
When we were renting a house one time, we found a dead scorpion in a lightbulb in a closet.
Still haven't figured that one out.
I would've smooshed it though.
Extremely primitive biologal system; went into extended hybernative state.
Lord I hate those things. Spent 2 years getting rid of them.
They can live anywhere for any amount of time. Completely unpredictable. I dropped one in a jar of rubbing alcohol and it swam around in there for quite a while until I finally poured it out and smooshed it.
Maybe originally there were two scorpions trapped in the there... ;-)
What do hibernating scorpions dream of?
.
You heard the Professor say that on Gilligan's Island, didn't you? ;-)
Probably their 3 wives and 9 children. (in Utah)
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