new old bug

[Leslie]

Fossil find is oldest land animal


Scientists have decided that a fossil found near Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire is the remains of the oldest creature ever to live on land. It is thought that the one-centimetre millipede which was prised out of a siltstone bed is 428-million-years-old. Experts at the National Museums of Scotland and Yale University have studied the fossil for months. They say the find is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land, rather than in the sea. The discovery on the foreshore of Cowie Harbour was made by an amateur fossil hunter, Mike Newman.

The fossil is believed to be some 20 million years older than what had previously been thought of as the oldest breathing animal - a peculiar spider-like creature chiselled out of the chert - a kind of rock - at Rhynie, also in Aberdeenshire. The millipede had spiracles, or primitive breathing structures on the outside of its body, making it the oldest air-breathing creature ever to have existed.

source nifty!!

 

[chcr]

Interesting.

 

[Luis G]

Nice

 

[Ms Ann Thrope]

I love reading stuff like this:

The discovery on the foreshore of Cowie Harbour was made by an amateur fossil hunter, Mike Newman.

It's a comfort to know that there are still ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the pursuit of knowledge.

Thanks for posting this, Leslie.

 

[IDLEchild]

Thanks Leslie

I had to spread the news on another forum..I hope you do not mind.

 

[Leslie]

nope, spread the word...I think this is fantabulously fascinating

 

[Gonz]

like we need any more bugs. New or old

 

[Squiggy]

Kewl...we came from millipedes and not monkeys...that explains my extra digits...

 

[tommyj27]

...and the odd taste for eating insects.

 

[BeardofPants]

I love reading stuff like this:

It's a comfort to know that there are still ordinary people doing extraordinary things for the pursuit of knowledge.

Yeah, I just love it when amateur archaeologists come along and ruin sites.

 

[Oz]

Aberdeenshire eh? Figures.....Scots get everywhere.....doesn't surprise me that life on land started there

(Isn't Arris from that part of the world?)

 

[drkavnger99]

And this one time at band camp there was this archeologist and he stuck his bone up my pu$$y! Oops sorry just watched american pie again!

 

[Squiggy]

Yeah, I just love it when amateur archaeologists come along and ruin sites.

Wouldn't you think that the find will direct research to the area? I doubt that the site is ruined..and it was a substantial find.