yes, biologists can be very silly too.

i think my favourite is Santacarius ="Santa claws", a fossil chelicerate, related to the more modern dude below.

at one point i have to get an excuse to get into the tropics and hunt down some amblypygids. really, are these not the freaking coolest critters?


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"If all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes and oceans represented by a thin film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for ( Read more... )

"...it is interesting to note that so-called "simpler" organisms with seemingly only marginal or intermediate adaptations for a terrestrial existence persist in spite of the presence of so-called complex organisms with more advanced adaptations. Nonvascular plants did not become extinct because of the evolution of vascular plants, and nonseed ( Read more... )

7200 light years away - in our own galaxy - there's a planet floating out there that's outlived its own star..a planet 12.6 billion years old. it's a gas giant, but in the first 10 billion years of its life, there could have been a smaller terrestrial planet orbiting between it & its star (before its star got caught in another's gravity well, ( Read more... )