Science
Related: About this forum520-million-year-old insect fossil so well preserved that its NERVOUS SYSTEM can be scanned
The earliest known complete nervous system preserved in the fossilised remains of a creature that crawled and swam in the ocean 520 million years ago has been discovered.
Scientists believe it shows the moment the ancestors of spiders and scorpions evolved from other insects and demonstrates how spiders' biting mouth parts evolved from its ancestor's appendages.
The creature is an ancestor of chelicerates which branched off from the family tree of other arthropods, including insects, crustaceans and millipedes.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2463237/520-million-year-old-insect-fossil-reveals-NERVOUS-SYSTEM.html#ixzz2hvis5vGY
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
hunter
(38,313 posts)They were the big predators of the time.
ejpoeta
(8,933 posts)DontTreadOnMe
(2,442 posts)Wow, God is really old.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)It was really small. I have to give credit to the paleontologists who do this work.
But what really is disturbing to me is all the comments about the age of this fossil, and how it is impossible to pinpoint the age. Or even worse, how the earth is not that old. Will these people never give up?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Tab
(11,093 posts)The Republican evangelists say humans (and creatures) have only been here for 4,000 year (and co-existed with the dinosaurs), not 520,000,000. Could they be wrong?
muriel_volestrangler
(101,320 posts)The whole point of this find is that the animal was not an insect. They have shown that it was a chelicerate - the spider/scorpion/horseshoe crab group. Neither does this "show the moment" that group 'evolved from insects' (and certainly not 'evolved from other insects' - they are not insects). It shows the moment was some time before this.