Spectacular specimen: This bug's a big one - 8 feet long - and New Mexico scientists nabbed...

Albuquerque Tribune ^ | April 14, 2005 | Sue Vorenberg

[righttackle44]

You don't use Die-Bug-Die. You call in airstrikes and carpet patterns with napalm.

Another alternative would be to send U.N. peacekeepers, looking all cute and girly in their powder-blue helmets,
out with flamethrowers. We'll know they find these monsters when we hear the blue-helmeted ones' eeeks and shrieks.

And wouldn't it be another embarrassment if French peacekeepers surrendered to one of these things?

[wbill]

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.

needs to be said.......it's Bush's fault.

:-)

[ApplegateRanch]

Thank the good Lord it is extinct.

If they had found a LIVE one, the envirowhackos would be screaming to "reintroduce" it, and claiming protection for it as an "endangered" species.

[ApplegateRanch]

It's a hugh, disgusting bug, however you date it!

I would never date one, nor allow my sister too, either, even if a moose did bite her once.

[Tax-chick]

What a good brother you are!

[doug from upland]

We have a 5 foot insect today. It is called Barborus Boxerosus.

[SunkenCiv]

I won't be impressed until they find fossil evidence of a kilopede.

[SunkenCiv]

Raaaaaaaaaaaid! A sort-of cryptobiology ping, and a paleontology ping. :')

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[righttackle44]

"Quibbles! It's a hugh, disgusting bug, however you date it!"

Which Hugh is it?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

ROFL!

[rdl6989]

It would take a 55 gallon drum of raid to kill a bug that big.

[Swordmaker]

Quibbles! It's a hugh, disgusting bug, however you date it!

DATE IT?! What kind of movie do you take one of those to?

[Darkchylde]

Hmmmm.... would this have anything to do with YOU?

[baseballfanjm]

I take it my usual bug spray wouldn't work on that.

[Ichneumon]

How do they know it was a bug?

Different kinds of animals make very distinctive tracks from each other. Apparently these tracks closely match the feet of an already known arthropod family, but these particular tracks are just really freakin' big compared to the more common specimens.

[Tax-chick]

"Men in Black".

[Renfield]

This brings up an interesting issue. Arthropods don't have lungs (at least, not in the mammalian sense). They breath through their skin. How could a creature this size have taken in enough oxygen to survive? It could only happen, I suspect, if the air pressure was vastly denser than it is now. We must have lost a lot of air somewhere along the path of history.

I have on occasion seen fossils of flying insects that are orders of magnitude larger than their descendants of today. This also suggests that the air was once much more dense.

[null and void]

Looks like it would taste like a giant LOBSTER..........

More like ammonia if the taste of the modern ones is any guide...

[null and void]

And how exactly did Noah get that thing on the Ark?

He didn't, they're extinct!

DUH!

[mewzilla]

You don't use Die-Bug-Die. You call in airstrikes and carpet patterns with napalm.

LOL! Bug hunt!!!

And wouldn't it be another embarrassment if French peacekeepers surrendered to one of these things?

For us, yes. For the French, non.