
Spider-Like Creature with a Scorpion’s Tail Found Trapped in Amber - Osiris30
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/spider-tail-amber.html?mabReward=CTS2&recid=10DBLl3OnsaRNCcvOaGKa2AlMig&recp=5&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine
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yesenadam
"It’s the stuff of prehistoric nightmares.

Eight legs. Fangs. And a whip-like tail.

...Its remains were found imprisoned in amber, as if Mother Nature herself
tried to lock this tiny terror away from the rest of the world."

Gee, is that bad writing or what? Sounds like crap tv, not the NYT.

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fwdpropaganda
Scorpions are already quite close to spiders. They're both arachnids.

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DoofusOfDeath
Scorpions are already quite close to spiders. They're both reasons I refuse to
live close to the equator.

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ivanhoe
And Australia, don't forget Australia...

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rosege
Scorpions are the least of your worries in Australia.

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brahmwg
Amateur bug-guy here. To me it looks like an early predecessor to the whip-
scorpion / vinegaroon.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelyphonida](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelyphonida)

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camillomiller
If I’ll ever have my own death metal band I will call it The Vinegaroon.

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itronitron
you may also want to consider 'The Solifugae'

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camillomiller
That's more fitting for my cello quartet specializing in Bach's sonatas :D

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noetic_techy
I hope they find remnant species deep in these jungles one day. Similar to the
Coelacanth.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth)

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JoeAltmaier
I've read that the original land animals were creatures such as this. But with
spinnerets. One has to wonder, what was a formerly-sea-creature doing with
spinnerets. And what possible use could they have on land, if this was the
first land animal. What would they catch in their web?

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dragonwriter
> I've read that the original land animals were creatures such as this. But
> with spinnerets.

This has spinnerets. But, also, probably not that much like the earliest land
animal:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumodesmus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumodesmus)

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JoeAltmaier
That makes a lot more sense!

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everdev
Are biological components like a scorpions tail, or eyes or legs coded in a
special way?

Not a biologist but it appears that biology is really good at preserving the
integrity of body parts even though they can be found in multiple species.

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kian
Check out HOX genes if you want to learn more about this - feel free to
message my_username OT cerebralinguist DOT net if you want some more sources!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_gene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_gene)

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dom96
Wow. Thanks for this link. The description of the genes in flies is amazing,
it seems they have done some experiments to see how flies develop with each
part of these genes modified.

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kian
Yeah, flies breed so quickly that knockouts are really easy to test. The fact
that it's the same set of genes conserved in mammals is nuts. If you find this
fascinating, you may also wish to look a bit deeper into the genetics of
morphogenesis and embryogenesis

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tptacek
Put it back, please.

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onewhonknocks
Please do not 'Jurassic Park' this thing back to life. Kthxbai.

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monocasa
DNA has a half life of only 521 years, so that avenue is unlikely to bear
fruit (or dinosaurs, or scropi-ders) anyway.

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dogma1138
[http://www.nature.com/news/first-horses-arose-4-million-
year...](http://www.nature.com/news/first-horses-arose-4-million-years-
ago-1.13261)

Methods for extracting aDNA are always improving, oldest full genome
sequencing is now over half a million years old.

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dkersten
If they artificially recreate the DNA somehow and then, again, somehow, bring
these things to life, may as well edit the DNA and make them a lot larger.
Now, that would be horrifying.

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dogma1138
We don’t really know how big they could get mulching species can grow nearly
in orders of magnitude.

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arthurcolle
yeah lets give them more legs, perfect idea

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jaclaz
>yeah lets give them more legs, perfect idea

Nature already had that idea with the centipedes and millipedes, the issue is
that they won't be classified as an arachnid, since one of the "key" features
is having exactly eight legs (actually four pairs):

[http://www.burkemuseum.org/blog/myth-eight-legs-always-
means...](http://www.burkemuseum.org/blog/myth-eight-legs-always-means-
spider).

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sparrish
And my nightmares now have new fuel.

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kbenson
At some point, after we start unlocking more secrets of the brain, we're going
to understand how some shapes and biological attributes have been
instinctively ingrained in our brains.

Then Hollywood will have some scientific basis to proceed from to make some
_true_ nightmare fuel that ticks _all_ the right horrible boxes.

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hawktheslayer
I agree with you, and this reminds me of the Black Mirror _Playtest_ episode
where, (spoiler alert), they create an artificially intelligent game that
adapts itself to maximize terror.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtest_(Black_Mirror)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playtest_\(Black_Mirror\))

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spike021
This reminds me of the Mind Game from Ender's Game:
[http://enderverse.wikia.com/wiki/Mind_Game](http://enderverse.wikia.com/wiki/Mind_Game)

Not necessarily terror, per se, but it generated itself based on the
imagination and interests of the characters IIRC.

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ZorroToaster
That thing looks like mix and match of various God of War enemies.

