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

Albuquerque Tribune ^ | April 14, 2005 | Sue Vorenberg

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

[Luna]

8-foot-long millipedes were in control of the landscape

The creeping terror?

[14erClimb]

Nothing more than glorified tiddly-winks.

[14erClimb]

Sorry, I meant erector set.

[Liberal Classic]

Arthropleura is known from both trace and body fossils from the Lower Carboniferous (Sterzel 1918; Pearson 1992; Rossler and Schneider 1997) through the Lower Permian (Ryan 1986; Schneider and Barthel 1997) of Europe and North America.

[TheBigB]

[Junior]

Huh? You think the fossils were faked?

[Argh]

Photo by W. Kraus of Aachen. By the way, I'm just aachen to get out of the office and go home and drink beer.

[Getready]

They only found the "fossilized" tracks of the buggie...
How do they know what it looked like???
How do tracks get fossilized? Wouldn't that mean that
the tracks had to be covered rapidly, or else they would
have worn away in surely a few rainfalls....

Why is that if an organism "evolves" it is due to the
environment, but if it "dies-off" it is due to the
environment? What makes an organism die in one
environmental change, but "evolve" in the other???
Or is it a case of, "because it's there" explanation, that
has no predictive value?

[Vroomfondel]

Looks like something from a Roger Corman movie.

Actually, it looks more like something from Naked Lunch. Like the thing that Dr. Benway got the black powder from.

[Vicomte13]

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

He DIDN'T.
(His wife wouldn't let him.)
And that's why there aren't any anymore.

I'd imagine the nastier critters like the mosquitoes, flies and nasty spiders, and rats, were not INVITED onto the ark.

[Billthedrill]

Probably tastes just like chicken. OK, a lot of chicken.

[Luna]

LOL! Thanks! Very nice. That puts me in the mood to watch that episode of MST3K tonight.

[coydog]

They invited THEMSELVES onto the ark ;)

[Vicomte13]

"They invited THEMSELVES onto the ark ;)"

Mosquitos, black flies and spiders...just think of them as Satan's Little Helpers.

Rats, on the other hand, can be good looking.
If you're a condor.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Anyway, my question is WHY did the atmosphere change at that time??

SUV's?

[Nataku X]

Does that mean this was the first known democrat?

You just hurt its feelings.

[El Cid]

Given that the Bible tells us that man's lifespan was a lot longer (~900 years) prior to the Flood - is it possible that these enormous critters (e.g., cockroaches, milipedes, etc) just grew because they lived a lot longer than they do today (bugs/reptiles, unlike mammals, just keep on growing the older they get)?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Looks like the creature from Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.

Something like this little guy?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"If you see anything that looks like a bug hole....nuke it. Let's move out!"