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Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs
Garimelda writes "Scientists have discovered what they believe is an eight-armed creature which colonized a large section of the world's oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged."
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Eight-armed, in the sense that a starfish is five-armed. Not quite as sci-fi weird as the headline might sound.
Given the time scales involved, that's kind of like saying "Alexander preceded Napoleon" -- I mean, it's true, but it leaves out a whole lot that happened in between.
Oh, never mind. The past is telescoped. There's old stuff (things that happened before my parents were born) older stuff (George Washington and other guys in funny clothes) very old stuff (King Arthur and Robin Hood) extremely old stuff (cavemen and dinosaurs) and, apparently, incredibly old stuff (before cavemen and dinosaurs -- who knew?) No point in asking people to maintain a sense of persepective.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
According to The Guide, it was the Jatravartids who were "unique", and since The Guide predates Ediacaran period, it is more likely to be correct (unless life itself is guilty of being neither beautiful, nor true).
Plus, if these newly discovered creatures had 8 limbs, they'd be similar to Octopuses (or octopi/octopodes) who are not known to use deodorants (and instead use a foul smelling chemical to avert predators). Thus, since Octopuses are not known to invent deodorants it is less likely that Eoandromeda octobrachiata invented them either.
Hence, the guide wins and Jatravartids keep the trophy.
For an instant I was upset that you spoiled it. That feeling was immediately washed away by gratitude.
Thank you for sparing me from reading this.
-Peter
I think bilateral symmetry could be shown to have advantages out-of-water. In the ocean, movement in three dimensions is common, and radially-symmetric designs are reasonable. But on land, movement is confined (mostly) to a plane, so the extra symmetry doesn't help an organism very much. There'd be a lot of wasted tentacles.
Like an octopus bar on $1 tequila night.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Not pure chance at all. Radial symmetry doesn't work on land where the movement is 2D and through a much thinner fluid. It adds too much weight also (something you don't have to worry about as much in the water).
If you adopt that line of reasoning (i.e.: words don't really mean what they mean), why stop there?
Who isn't to say that all the words in the Bible don't mean something else entirely because the book was actually written in an unknown language that only coincidentally resembled ancient Hebrew?
Those 'limbs' are in an exceptionally regular spiral pattern. If you fossilized an octopus, you'd expect the limbs to be all crossed over and tangled up. I'm guessing that those 'limbs' couldn't move independently, and are more like ridges in a sheet of material.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.