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Eight-Armed Animal Preceded Dinosaurs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the doc-oc-uber-alles dept.

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."

2 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Eight-armed creature by MisterSquirrel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Eight-armed, in the sense that a starfish is five-armed. Not quite as sci-fi weird as the headline might sound.

    1. Re:Eight-armed creature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Erm... did many people interpret it as such?

      I did. It's because of the "preceded dinosaurs" which made me think it was eight-armed vertebrates, for about two seconds. There's no reason to say "preceded dinosaurs" when it was significantly before dinosaurs and had nothing to do with them. You could say they preceded humans. It's just silly and confusing. It turns out these fossils are twice as old as dinos.

      A better word would be "predate" which doesn't imply a close correlation in time.