Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

Walking With Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs

Posted by "GrrlScientist" on August 20, 2007
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This streaming video gives you a snapshot of evolution prior to the rise of the dinosaurs. Even though it’s kinda long, it’s definitely worth watching .. although that giant spider gave me the heebie-jeebies! [9:17]

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Comments

  1. #1 dearkitty
    August 20, 2007

    Hi, this is just one episode of the complete Walking With Monsters series. See that here.

  2. #2 Christopher Taylor
    August 20, 2007

    You’ll be glad to know, then, that the giant spider is non-existent. Megarachne (the critter that inspired it) has since been re-interpreted as an oddball eurypterid. Palaeos.org has an illustration closer to what it would have really looked like. The largest known spider of all time, I believe, is actually a modern bird-eating spider.

  3. #3 ArchAsa
    August 21, 2007

    What the **** is a eurypterid? The picture still showed it eating a reptile, and it looked scary enough for me.
    Though I’ve always had nightmares about the giant dragon flies myself.

    What series was this clip taken from? I’ll keep an eye out for reruns on Discovery.

  4. #4 Christopher Taylor
    August 22, 2007

    Eurypterids are often referred to as “sea scorpions”. They were aquatic stem-arachnids that flourished in the Palaeozoic (take a look at Palaeos). Yes, many of them did look rather like scorpions, though the tails probably weren’t toxic. A few of them reached spectacular sizes – 2 metres long!

    The clip is from Walking with Monsters, the “prequel” to Walking with Dinosaurs. If this clip was any indication, though, the quality of writing and research rather declined for this series.