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."

Comments

Re:blah!

[Gulthek]

The Earth is actually 5,000 years old and was created by the great Flying Spaghetti Monster. But in His infinite wisdom, he created it old.

I.E. He created a world that was millions of years old 5,000 years ago.

Two questions...

[Maxim Kovalenko]

1. Why is there no reference to how they know that the spider is that old?... and 2. Does the writer actually know that spiders have hemolymph instead of blood as us humans would look at it? Sigh...lazy science reporting strikes again.

Re:I'm sorry, but the bible says...

[moz25]

It is silly to make broad statements about people grouped only by not believing what you believe in because they may be a lot more diverse and intricate than what you expect. You cannot understand a person who believes other things if you express their thoughts in what you believe.

There have been over 2500 deities recorded in human history. Maybe you subscribe to the notion of the Christian God, but that means you are in denial of the thousands of others. There is no way you're not going to go to some hell according to some religion's teaching. My guess is that most Christians are not in the least fearful of Allah or Wodan... how much of a mental leap is it then to understand that people cannot be fearful of entities they don't believe exist?

I am not at all terrified by the concept of eternal happy life or absolute justice. What DOES terrify me is the idea that the most intelligent, logical and consistent being in the universe (and beyond) would require me to join a personality cult and accept that the worst sin possible is not rape or murder and so on, but to deny the validity of the religion. Remember that according to Christianity and Islam, even people who are the most loving, caring, law-abiding and humble will be punished, while unpleasant, bigoted and rude people supposedly get great rewards.

It really does seem that some people like yourself cannot grasp (terrified perhaps) that their views are regarded as little more than baseless mysticism and personality reverence.