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"
...
Wouldn't the time-related changes *be* his results?
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*
"I am worried that such specimen could be concealing deadly bacteria/viruses that man does not know how to handle."
Any such bacteria/virus certainly wouldn't know how to handle us either. The ones that most affect us are those which have evolved to take advantage of our weaknesses. I'd say the risk is very low.
"Mind you, there is a rumor that AIDS was a rogue virus that escaped from some American lab."
There's also a rumor that man didn't land on the moon. My guess is that you believe that one too? With the distribution of aids cases and the fact that it's actually quite difficult to transmit, that's a pretty ridiculous rumor.
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...."
I'm not. But to reassure you, he will be doing all his work in a sterile environment, to avoid contaminating the specimen. Happily, the precautions work both ways.
Mind you, there is a rumor that AIDS was a rogue virus that escaped from some American lab.
There are also rumors that the moon is made of green cheese, and that the rapture will be next Thursday. Do you plan on repeating them too?
If we bring back these creatures (a la Spielberg) and they get out of hand, we can just step on 'em.
I read
First all those dinosaur bones and now this!
;-)
While we both know you're kidding, I have to wonder about the authenticity of carbon dating proceedures in general. I'm sure lots of scientists believe in them wholeheartedly, but I'm of a more humble seed. If they say this is a 20mil yr old spider, then I would agree under the stipulation that it's 20mil yrs in relation to everything else we've carbon dated.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
edit your robots.txt
Well in that case, its definately 20 million years old. Because... uhm... we can carbon date stuff thats not dead yet. Thats how they figured out what the 'normal' amount of C-14 was.
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!!
Well, it's like this. You're an idiot. He's a scientist. Your post is the equivalent of:
"How does Ford know that it's new Hybrid cars won't have a nuclear meltdown?"
"I heard that cancer is cause by di-hydrogen monoxide."
Why send rockets into space? Leave the vacuum alone!
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.
Funny how this 20 million year old spider species exists in identical form today. It must be a perfectly adapted design; why else would it not have changed in all that time?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
Hello Mr. BogaBoga
Your concerns are valid. There is the small chance that previously extinct bacteria might be trapped there. Though, I would not be that worried. First, this is not an alien, and what ever is there has been here before. Secondly, its 20,000,000 years old, though preserved in amber in form, it, and all bacteria with it, is certainly dead. Actually, I would be surprised if they can find a complete set of DNA. It's probably all in pieces.
Now, about the AIDS theory... AIDS is probably the most studied virus, and most scientists in the world, not only in the US, believe that this is a retrovirus that passed from monkeys to humans somewhere in Africa, about a hundred years ago. Actually, the origin of the two common HIV strains has been narrowed to specific species of African monkeys. The origin of HIV-2 has been established to be the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon. The origin of HIV-1 is a chimpanzee subspecies: Pan troglodytes troglodytes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_origin)
If you are going to present such an extreme theory, it must be supported with extreme evidence.
Thanks
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.
Requiem
A) 20 millions years isn't that old, its 100 times older than humans, big deal. Thats why the form hasn't changed that much, but it may also be because the design really is that well. Most spiders have few predators but quite a selection of prey.
B) Some animals did evolve to what is considered pretty optimal, some examples being sharks, crocidiles and squid. If you follow the genetic chains of living things you'll see that some tend to have fewer changes. Often times the case is that the animal has few or none predators.
Regards,
Steve
Dr David Penney didn't use carbon dating. Carbon dating only works to roughly 60,000 years ago. Beyond that, the radioactivity of the little C-14 that remains falls can't be told from background radiation.
I don't know what technique was used to date the spider; The article only says they used the blood in the spider to do it.
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.
> Funny how this 20 million year old spider species exists in identical form today. It must be a perfectly adapted design; why else would it not have changed in all that time?
TFA mentions that it's a new species. I.e., not identical to any known spider.
(Presumably "new species" means "newly discovered", since the specimen is rather old.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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!
Well please let me know what science you've discovered that conflicts with all known, tested, and proven nuclear theory. Regardless, carbon dating is only good for up until about 60,000 years old. After that many other methods can be used, most of those methods are proven and extremely accurate. Please also keep in mind that scientists rarely, if ever, only use one method of dating something. By using two or more completely unrelated methods to date a specimen you can get its age to within extremely small margins of error.
Carbon dating, and similar methods, tend to often be most useful for mummies and humans or recent dead animals. Methods like those can't be used on dinosaur bones because most of the time the bone has been replaced with a different material (one example would be in southern south america, some major finds have been found but the bones were hard to move because they were nearly pure iron and bigger than a man.) You should read up on the science, its a very mature and well understood thing. The media does shitty research and doesn't check any facts that various religious groups tell them. Learn for yourself, you can probably take a class in it at your local college.
The intelligent design folk tend to be ignorant and ignoring facts. They can't accept the truth because they want more to their life, they want to believe that God designed people after himself (which in my eyes is a pretty conceited view, and also an insult to God considering how crappy and fragile we are designed, not to mention the numerous unused organs... I guess God just wanted to weigh us down.) I am a religious man, but some people associate evolution with meaning there is no heaven (not necessarily a true relation) and can't go through life not thinking that there is some higher meaning for them living. Its really all a case about people not being as important as they want to be. Its always been that way (hell, for centuries we claimed we were the center of the friggin Universe) and some people just need to wake up and accept the truth.
Regards,
Steve
You are correct, especially about your second point. As a Biology teacher, I emphasize the point to my students that spiders (and all arthropods) do NOT have blood (that term is reserved for animals with a closed circulatory system). Spiders and other arthropods have a fluid called "hemolymph" (as you mentioned) which contains the equivalent of our blood plus lymphatic fluids (hense the name "hemo"=blood + "lymph").
Do you actually expect any more from BBC News, though?
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]
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.
Um, if he "found" it in a museum, doesn't that mean someone ELSE discovered it?
Just curious.
Yes, blood is made out of atoms. If the atoms are embedded in a durable impenetrable container, they're not going anywhere as long as the container remains intact. The molecules that made up the blood may degrade, but the atoms all remain in place.
Arguments like this don't matter anyway. If you believe that an invisible man is fscking with our minds by creating a young universe that he filled with all types of evidence that makes it look old (including fossils, geological features, astronomical phenomena, cosmic redshifting and background radiation, minerals on earth and other planets, and myriad other observations, many down to the subatomic level) then all bets are off. You don't need to argue that carbon dating is flawed: in that scenario all carbon samples were rigged when they were created, so worrying about the scientific validity of any dating technique is futile.
There is no such thing as 'creation science.'
Science is based on 3 fundamental assumptions: That the universe exists (is not a figment of my imagination), that it interacts with us in predictable ways (E=MC^2, PV=nRT, etc), and that the way it interacts with us does not change (E=MC^2 & PV=nRT today, they did yesterday, and they always will). If you believe that God exists and interacts with the universe, then you have to reject science because that invalidates the 3rd assumption as God could change the way the universe works (Hmm... I think I'll make E equal MC^1.5 for reasons that puny mortals cannot comprehend)
If you want to believe that God popped the universe into existance 6000 years ago, that's cool with me. Just don't try to pretend it's scientific, because it isn't. And don't try to sneak it into science classrooms, because it isn't science.
The baseline concentration of carbon 14 is from a 1950 measurement - C14 is atmospheric nitrogen bombarded by naturally occurring radiation, the C14 is incorporated metabolically into living organisms - but only as long as you're alive and respiring.
As to accuracy, there are calibration curves for it against other known counters - tree rings etc.
As to precision, there was also a recalculation of the half-life - but they were only off by a few percent.
They're not off by an integral factor, they're not off by an order of magnitude. But after ten or so half-lifes, the differences become too small to be practically useful.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
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...)
Abstract from the paper
Note that this was submitted and accepted more than a year ago. If you have a subsciption (most universities), you can get it at this url
Abstract: Two spiders (Filistatidae) in Miocene Dominican
Republic amber, one newly identified and only the second
known fossil of this family, have autospasized legs (detached
at a predetermined locus of weakness when restrained by a
non-self-induced source) at the patella-tibia joint. In both
specimens, droplets of haemolymph (blood) are preserved
exiting the patellae. The autospasized legs and the presence
of haemolymph suggests that both spiders were engulfed in
rapid-flowing resin seeps of relatively low viscosity, rather
than having wandered onto a sticky exudate, becoming stuck
and then covered by a subsequent resin flow. These are the
first reported incidences of such fossilized blood droplets, the
shape, size and position of which provide clues to preservational
taphonomy, an understanding of which is necessary
for reliable conclusions concerning fossil communities and
ecosystems. In addition, haemolymph droplets may serve as
reservoirs for fossil DNA.
Key words: Dominican Republic, spider, Araneae, Filistatidae,
haemolymph, autospasy.
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....
The Bible makes no statements as to the age of the Earth.
Let me repeat that. The Bible makes no statements as to the age of the Earth.
Just because some count the number of generations in the Bible to 'prove' the age doesn't mean they are correct.
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.
So the September 11th hijackers really are in heaven now, enjoying their 72 virgins and whatnot?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
it's a tiny minority outside the US (1% I'd guess.. seems to be near 100% of christians in the US.. didn't one state mandate teaching it as science? Scary stuff...).
Where do you get this stuff? A tiny minority outside the US? Do you happen to know fundamental (or even mainstream semi-educated) Islamic views on evolution? What about tribal Africa religious views? What about South American religious? What about fundamental Christians in Africa? I guarantee you that many, many people across the world have never heard of evolution, would think it's nonsense, and/or disbelieve it today. But that is neither here nor there.
Seems to be near 100% of Christians in the US? Well, something like 80-90% of Americans would identify themselves as Christians. Even non-observant ones. Not like in Europe. I don't go to church, but I consider myself a Christian. It's a cultural thing. I think many Europeans don't understand this. Anyways, long story short, there's NO WAY anywhere remotely near 100% of Christians believe the Earth was created 6000 years ago. I have no idea how many people actually believe that, but I can say I went through public schools in North Carolina (ie, Bible Belt!) and never met a fellow student who has believed that. Didn't one state mandate it? definitely not. Arguments have been made over whether religious views (ie, 6000 years, intelligent design, etc) are even ALLOWED to be taught in schools, not mandated.
I know as an American, I find almost every BBC article that touches on faith in the US as blatantly wrong. Hah, it's kind of like modern-orientalism. We can't really get past our biases and our own preconceptions and our own beliefs. It's easy to see the US as a seething hotbed of fundamentalism. Compared to Europe, maybe so. Compared to many parts of the world, definitely not.
And getting either further off topic, the argument can be made that socialism and environmentalism are the new religions of Europe, with fundamentalisms and lunacies all their own.
...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.
Religious tolerance is allowing people to freely express their beliefs and supporting their rights to hold those beliefs .
.. the word was created by the invisible pink unicorn and that the Spaghetti monster is in fact the great Evil .
There is nothing wrong with parodying them and having a laugh about how silly they are .
Religion is something you choose and should be free to choose. It should also be something we are free to mock .
He sincerely believes that the spaghetti monster is a good parody , he sincerely believes that their religious ideas are a load of bunkum . Is there any difference ? Should he be disallowed from expressing those beliefs in this manner , especially with a crowed in which many share those beliefs .
Even though we all know its partially twaddle
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Why mod the parent down? He's right. If you truly believe in science, you'll research this and find out that all of our dating schemes are based on assumptions that we keep having to redefine because we find they are wrong every 10-20 years.
All we know is - its old. Everytime somebody finds something that goes against the pillars of billions of years, its treated as an abnormality. Fact is - our great scientists that guzzle hundreds of millions of dollars for research based on assumptions don't know jack and are 100x worse than the Bush administration for cronyism. If only a tenth of the money spent on this junk would be spent on cures for cancer, alzhiemers, and other diseases - we'd probably be far more along and far more knowledgeable about ourselves.
No we can't. Carbon dating tries to determine how long something has been dead from the ratio of radioactive versus stable carbon in its tissues; it is assumed that as long as the thing lived, it exchanged carbon freely with the surroundings (getting into its tissues tiny amounts of radioactive carbon produced in the upper atmosphere among the stable isotope), and when it died, this exchange stopped, leading to the radioactive isotope being depleted from those its tissues through radioactive decay.
In any case, Wikipedia claims that carbon dating can only be used to measure times some 60 000 years back, so this seems rather irrelevant for the discussion at hand.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Well we all know where Alabama, Georgia and Texas stand on this issue.
What's your point?
Although our EU overlords may work hard on a worldwide marketing campaign to make it seem otherwise: there's no such thing as "a European" in a cultural sense. Views, both religious and political, differ strongly across national borders. So do the demographic makeups of European countries. Europe is an economic union and a judicial and political one in some ways.
Some European countries would qualify as more religious than the United States, in my experience, take Roman Catholic Italy for instance. While other countries like the Netherlands are counted amongst the most secular nations on the planet.
As "an American", I'd suggest not attributing opions or cultural attributes to "a European", unless you're very sure it actually hold across national borders. It's similar to calling Canadians and Mexicans Americans. I know from experience that isn't taken too well either.
Just thought I'd let you know.
And about Europeans not understanding that someone would call himself a Christian even if he stays out of church: in most European countries, churchgoing has seen a steady decline, while the same amount of people as about 20 years still calls themselves Christian. So, I think that most Europeans can identify perfectly well with that standpoint.
"And getting either further off topic, the argument can be made that socialism and environmentalism are the new religions of Europe, with fundamentalisms and lunacies all their own."
Aw, first you make an exelent speech about how Americans view religion in comparison to the beliefs shown by Europe's media. And then you end with a sentence to make it plain that you've been completely indoctrinated by your own government & media. At most it can be said that the average European is slightly more worried about the current state of affairs (unfortunately).
It sure beats an omnipotent, omnisentient judge with a poorly communicated sense of morals and a tendency to attribute unpleasantness to other entities of his design.
I can respect people's love of tradition, I can respect what the church has done in the past to assemble communities, but ultimately, I think a bunch of guys made up this whole God thing to use people's existentialist angst to steal their land and money.
Nobody's killed anyone in the name of the flying spagetti monster. It will no doubt happen one day, but until then, it is a far less corrupt vision of the universe.
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.
see a Text Widget
yes, but but in the Christian faith, you're hoping not to be touched by His Noodly Appendage.
I also went to public school in North Carolina, pretty far out in the country even. I have met one person that I know for sure believes in a "young earth" (though I would bet there are more) and scores upon scores that think evolution is bullshit. It is truely scary.
Does it strike anyone else as odd, that the scientist quoted in article mentions the DNA possibility almost in passing, but rambles on proudly, at length, about how he figure out how it died from being hit with "fast moving resin"? (wtf?) Nothing like breaking your leg from being hit by maple syrup.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Also note;
Even sub-optimal biological systems can not-change for a long time under these and other conditions;
- adaptions prevent or correct mutations
- long lifespan
- many breeding partners over a wide area
- no predators (like sharks)
- stable environment in the relevant parts (sharks that I know of do not specialize in foods for example)
- large population
So it isn't suprising that some animals don't change much over time.
ps. WTF is it with the ID people spreading from Fark to here... I figured that Slashdot had somewhat of a higher standard.
Yeah, except the AIDS virus was found in samples of some dudes (again in Africa) from the 1920s.
The best hypothesis so far as it's from bushmeat usage. I.e. killing, butchering and eating monkeys.
"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.