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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."
Arachnic Park!
Arachnid Park or Jurassic Spider?
I'm anxious for the day that strange human/animal chimeras suddenly appear in society.. Or maybe animals like gorillas genetically altered so their voice box/trachea/etc are able to produce a human like voice. Lets accelerate their inevitable evolution,. Or dogs/cats grown with human brains & eyes.. Maybe even pets with designer colours, exotic colours like those parrots in the congo. We could mix all this stuff up, create some something wicked, a unicorn ? Hell ya.. or some other mythological creature. A horse/rhino hybrid.
Great! Let's open a theme park. :-D
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Spider 'is 20 million years old'
A scientist has described a spider that was trapped and preserved in amber 20 million years ago.
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.
Since the discovery two years ago, he has used droplets of blood in the amber to reveal the age of the specimen.
It is thought to be the first time spider blood has been found in amber and scientists hope to extract its DNA.
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.
It is a new species from the Filistatidae family commonly found in South America and the Caribbean.
Dr Penney believes it was climbing up a tree 20 million years ago when it was hit on the head by fast flowing resin, became engulfed in the resin and died.
He claims the shape and position of the blood droplets revealed which direction the spider was travelling in and which of its legs broke first.
"It's amazing to think that a single piece of amber with a single spider in it can open up a window into what was going on 20 million years ago," he said.
"By analysing the position of the spider's body in relation to the droplets of blood in the amber we are able to determine how it died, which direction it was travelling in and even how fast it was moving."
He first saw the fossil during a visit to the Museo del Ambar Dominicano, in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
Dr Penney reports his findings in the latest issue of the journal Palaeontology.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Maybe I'm just being an asshole, but I dream of a day when slashdot runs its stories through a spellchecker. Perserved? WTF?