Anthropology, Evolution and Science
Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
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Category: Paleontology
Posted on: August 17, 2007 12:07 AM, by afarensis, FCD
From National Geographic:
The well-preserved marine animals, called pycnogonids, were unearthed in 160-million-year-old fossil beds at La Voulte.In a paper published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a team of French scientists describes 70 specimens--including the one seen above--from three distinct species found in the region's Lagerstätte, a type of sedimentary rock formation.
Several other pictures can be found here and the article can be found here (not open access).
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Comments
Wow. Such things b-movies are made of.
It's so well preserved, I wonder if it's exoskeleton was particularly thick?
Posted by: Glendon Mellow | August 17, 2007 5:59 AM
Glendon: It looks fairly similar to a modern sea-spider, and I don't believe their particularly hard-bodied animals.
Seeing as the previous tally of fossil pycnogonids of any description was probably less than ten individuals, this is a fantastic find.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | August 17, 2007 8:11 AM
So, does this help clarify the taxononmy of sea-spiders?
I'd really like them to turn out to be Anomalocaris long lost cousin.
Posted by: Graculus | August 17, 2007 7:03 PM