There is a fundamental conceptual error in that last remark by Alexander Blanke (though it may have been something he felt forced to say): The question is not whether a sucking pump would be an advantage but how it could have arisen independently twice by natural selection acting on random mutations within the time available. And no, “natural selection” is not supposed to be a synonym for “hocus pocus.”
Tag: millipedes
100 million years before the dinosaurs, the biggest known bug
A fluke discovery. And we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the remarkable stuff that’s out there.
A millipede with more than 1000 legs
It has 1,306 legs—more than any other animal—and belongs to a new species that has been named Eumillipes persephone.
Precambrian creature scrunches the origin of life even further
This “revolutionary animal” is not that much like the Cambrian creatures so far found but the big question is, how did life explode so quickly if it was only by chance? Why not just give up on that idea and study the creature for what it is?
Oldest “bug” is 425 million years old, 75 million years earlier than expected
Will we all meet up at the Big Bang? Don’t rule it out.
Millipedes found in 100 mya amber comprise 13 of 16 known groups
From ScienceDaily: Over 450 millipedes, fossilized in 100-million-year-old Burmese amber, were recently discovered by a research team. Using micro-CT technology, the scientists identified 13 out of the 16 main groups of modern millipedes amongst them. For half of these groups, the findings also represent the oldest known fossils. … According to the scientists, most of Read More…