Living Species of Aquatic Beetle Found in 20-Million-Year-Old Sediments

reply to post by ignant


Whoops I forgot to actually put the link of the article that referenced that cartoon.....sorry paranormal.about.com...

I must admit I am really looking forward to the new movie coming out on October 14th, entitled "The Thing" about an EBE encased in Antarctic ice and thawed in present day. It is supposedly a prequel to the original John Carpenter film from 1982 of the same title. Not quite what you had in mind when you created your thread but there are some comparisons and who doesn't like a good movie every now and then for entertainment purposes and to get the creative thought processes moving.

Originally posted by bhornbuckle75
reply to post by ignant

 

Whoops I forgot to actually put the link of the article that referenced that cartoon.....sorry paranormal.about.com...

awesome! all of the other accounts there were from the 1700s-1800s, except the turtle one.

so a turtle survived a year of being entrapped in (presumably breatheable) concrete, but died onlu days later upon excavation.

and frogs too, Rana sylvatica, which looks to me more or less like a common leopard frog, routinesly hibernates each winter frozen 'solid'.

hmm, so the body produces a natural cryogenic antifreeze. i wonder if experiments have been done on prolonging the alaska winter (artificially in a lab) to mimic a mini ice age - theres no telling how many years the frogs might be able to endure in frozen hibernation! perhaps a century? or millenium. now, that is fathomable considering that is how at least a few ancient species rode out the last ice age.

Originally posted by fixer1967
So it seems that evolution for this species stopped some 20 million years ago. A copy from today is the same as a 20 million year old copy. Both side of the evolution debate are going to have fun with this one.

No, not really. People make the mistake of thinking that the purpose of life is to "keep evolving". It's not. If there's no pressure to adapt, then there's no need to evolve. Evidently this beetle has adapted pretty well to it's environment, hence the lack of change.