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20 Million Year Old Spider Found

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the complete-with-drivers-license-and-birth-certificate dept.

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."

1 of 413 comments (clear)

  1. Re:blah! by ergo98 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Uh, so you're questioning decades of work by people smarter than you?

    History is littered with the overturning of decades of work by smarter people...who were all wrong. Even when you accept the foundation of carbon dating, it is remarkable how repeated testing on the same object can yield many magnitudes of time differences.

    Of course this really is all sort of funny - Many Christians believe in evolution, and the Vatican even released a statement saying that Darwin's observations were consistent with the bible. The whole "6000 year" thing is figment of a particular brand of Christianity in the US, owing to a particularly literal interpretation not shared elsewhere.