Slashdot Mirror
20 Million Year Old Spider Found
evil agent writes "BBC News is reporting that Paleontologist Dr. David Penny has found a spider, and two droplets of blood, perfectly perserved in amber. He was able to extract the blood and determine its age: 20 million years old. Since it is thought to be the first time that spider blood has been found perserved in amber, it is hoped that DNA could be extracted."
Or does this sound like the intro narrative to a horror sci-fi flick...
God continues to fuck with us! First all those dinosaur bones and now this! Everyone knows the earth is only 3,000 years old, they added up all the people's ages in the bible and proved it!
/. has been tricked by the atheist science lobby, again :)
Looks like
Oh boy I hope they clone it. 'Cause that's all we need is more spiders... :/
to Arachnid Park!
Michael Crichton creams his pants in cybercafe after reading this report.
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
So one day, thousands (millions?) of years from now some scientists will be looking at my pale, naked body inside a shell of delicious hardened maple syrup, in which I died doing what I loved.
Then they'd bring me to some scientific symposium, and present me up on stage.
"Here you can see an ancient human, most likely in the 'geek' class. You can tell by his white skin, lack of muscles, and raw skin on his penis from over-masturbation"
*Audience oooh's and aaah's*
Since science articles are only 50% correct, it's 10 million years old.
BTW,it looks remarkably like spiders that are merely 20 days old.
Queue NOVA voice over: "20 million years ago, the Earth was a much different place...with much difference life forms!"
Kid: "Sir! What about this spider!?"
NOVA voice: "Okay! Okay! The spiders were all the same! But there were no humans to screw things up! GOT IT!"
Kid: "Sorry...."
If we bring back these creatures (a la Spielberg) and they get out of hand, we can just step on 'em.
I read
edit your robots.txt
Or maybe it's just the demo that God presents at fairs to attract VC. I wonder if he sells licenses or subscriptions...
that's right.. the odds of molecules turning into a fully formed human are the same as that of an explosiion in a junkyard yielding a fully assembled 747. HEHEHEHE
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Palaeontologist Dr David Penney, of the University of Manchester, found the 4cm long by 2cm wide fossil during a visit to a museum in the Dominican Republic.
"Oh, look! It's an amazing discovery! I found these T. Rex bones! And look, it's an ancient spider preserved in amber! Wow - there's a wooly mammoth entrapped in tar! This is the richest archeological find ever! Oh, wait... I'm in a museum."
Carbon dating just checks how much of a sample of Carbon-14 has decayed. It's not as if they take some carbon from the organism and do some weird shit to it, like putting it next to a TV and then throwing it in boiling water to see what happens.
Maybe that old Slashdot troll was on to something when he started putting hot grits down his pants. Maybe he just wasn't advanced enough to realize that if he'd done it with tree sap, then he'd be naked and petrified with blood and DNA intact for at least 20 Million years, just like this spider!
I've been considering different ways I could preserve my body, and I think encasing myself in amber has shot to the top of the list, past deep freezing, and freeze drying.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Or maybe it's just the demo that God presents at fairs to attract VC. I wonder if he sells licenses or subscriptions...
I think subscriptions. 20+ years ago when I actually went to church, I would always see them pass around a metal plate, and everyone was expected to put money in it.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Ahh, but you were fooled again!! The DAY-VIL encased that spider in amber just to TEST YOUR FAITH! Just like all the dinosaur bones and all those gamma rays that supposedly come from that fictonal outer space! Yup all the DAY-VIL'S work!!! PRAAAYZZZ JEEEEBUS!!! PRAAAYZZZ JEEEEBUS!!! [gurrgle] Blaaarrrgghhhannnnn! [froth] [epileptic fit]
Linking to answersingenesis on Slashdot means you suck at life.
It was discovered by a scientist's wife, who demanded he come from the other side of the forest to squish it with his shoe...
(No, I'm not a sexit pig... just a married man with an aracnophobic wife...)
Ignignokt: Did anyone see an eight-foot spider wearing a diaper in the parking lot anywhere?
Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future: I did see that spider, but when I was in that parking lot, it was about 375 thousand years ago....
Based on the chances of transmitting aids via different mechanisms of intercourse, it is now believed that God's will is That Lesbians Shall Inherit the Earth.
Damn your relentless logic! Personally, I believe that cancer is caused by 'intelligent infection'. Cancer is far to complicated to be anything but the work of a 'great doctor in the sky'.
Obviously, He reached out and touched the moderators with His noodly appendage.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The spider commented that it was cold, and that no one turns up the goddamned heat anymore. It went on to note that younger spiders ran all over his web yesterday, and left things quite untidy. "No sir, things ain't what they used to be 'tall."
Bah. I'm going to skip that amateur penny-ante stuff and go straight for the two-hundred-and-fifty-some. Sex is much more exciting when you need an HR department just to schedule it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
...But the real question is can they use it's DNA to create a spider with four asses?
A whole hearted "Fuck That Noise!" to your insightful post.
I can't be the only person getting bad vibes from the idea of scientists recovering some 20 million year old spider DNA from this thing. We all know that once scientists get hold of 20 million year old spider DNA they can't just study it and compare it to modern spider DNA. Oh hell no, they're going to have to make some brand new "vintage" 20 million year old spiders out of it. Then those spiders will escape and breed with our spiders and shortly after that we're going to learn about the little tiny kind of spider who was really responsible for the Dinosaurs going away.
I'm going to be so pissed off when I'm proven right on this.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Dr Penney, of the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, said he had used the blood droplets to trace how, when and where the spider died.
Was there a question about how the spider died? I could have saved you some time and money. I could have made a good guess on the "where" also if you told me where you found him.
RP
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The point is that we'd rather have a poison dart dolphin than Bush.
Except when it comes to election time.
Whatever, just make sure you get that sample to the test chamber on time. The Administrator was most insistent that we proceed on schedule. The chance of a resonance cascade scenario is surely remote...
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Well we all know where Alabama, Georgia and Texas stand on this issue.
What's your point?
yes, but but in the Christian faith, you're hoping not to be touched by His Noodly Appendage.
"I don't know what technique was used to date the spider"
Well, my guess is that he got to know the spider a bit before he finally asked it out. Then it could be a nice dinner, some wine, and a walk on the beach. If it was a more "casual" date, it might have involved a movie or Putt-Putt.
We may never know.