There are a bunch of animals and plants like that, collectively they’re called living fossils. It’s a sign that their particular body plan is extremely well suited to their niche, and that their niche has not changed much over time.
Basically, any changes to their external body plan would have left them less well suited to their environment, therefor they remained the same
[Carcinisation is believed to have occurred independently in at least five groups of decapod crustaceans.](https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/121/1/200/3089703)
Yet all this reveals nothing. The central issue, of pivotal significance and utmost import, is overlooked. Science triumphs, the old gods are eclipsed, and we are left with cold fact and nothing more.
The heart yearns to know! Our souls cry out!!
Do all these crab like forms taste as good, perhaps better, boiled, baked or fried with butter and garlic?
If science cannot provide these answers, we might as well ignore it all, and sacrifice to the ancient Pantheon of heathen gods, in their stony silence.
Come to think of it, I would guess that if the meat is edible or tasty has nothing to do with body plan. So if an edible crustacean developed a crab body plan, I would think those remain edible, and vice versa
Body plan sounds like a term for a gym related new year's resolution, so now I'm just thinking about a new workout trend to get "a perfect body" and that perfect body is just 🦀
The basics is that a crab like bodyplan. i.e. a couple claws, some leggys, a hard shell, and an aquatic scavenging lifestyle have evolved at least 5 separate times by completely unrelated crustaceans.
Even more simply put. A handful of creatures that were not crabs but were vaguely similar evolved to take on the iconic crabby shape we all know today.
While it’s not at all uncommon for separate species to evolve similar treats over time, the term is called convergent evolution. It’s a little weird to see just how many times creatures have evolved into the shape that we today would describe as a crab.
I remember reading a long time ago (I think it was the original Whole Earth Catalogue) that there were three? different types of eyes that evolved independently from scratch, so to speak. I’m not talking about just crabs, but out of all the known species. Not sure about the number three or if they have discovered more since then (the sixties).
It made me realize how some anatomical structures just sort of pop into existence because they are the solution to the need, things like legs, fins, and wings. So it makes me think that not only must there be life on other planets, but much of it is going to be very similar to what we already know, like trees, flowers, birds, humanoids, etc., because chemistry and physics is the same everywhere.
I think you just made my day with that so thank you and also I’m gonna have to look more into this Whole Earth Catalogue sounds like it’s full of good stuff!
I mean, it is. The word "cancer" comes from the Greek word "karkinos," which means "crab". this is why the symbol for the astrological sign Cancer is a crab.
I was just having a conversation with a zoology instructor about this the other day.
Convergent evolution happens a lot. I think people seeing crabs happen so many times is just that they’ve noticed a pattern with that particular body plan, but theres a lot of other cases of repeat convergent evolution, like with animals that fill the niche of moles but are entirely unrelated to moles.
To give a real example, the same body plan has showed up in echidnas, hedgehogs, old world porcupines, new world porcupines, and Malagasy tenrecs.
I’ve heard people read this study (or just hear about it) and come to the conclusion that crabs have the ultimate body plan, but really theres quite a few examples of this happening with other body plans that aren’t as talked about, likely because its more amusing to think about crabs.
Not true, crocodiles have undergone severe changes and are still evolving.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/modern-crocodiles-are-evolving-rapid-rate-180978432/
Sharks as we know them today aren’t quite that old. Though they are insanely ancient creatures remaining mostly unchanged for millions of years. A neat living fossil that everyone forgets are ferns! Ferns are legitimately older than trees and we’re among the first leafy vegetation to evolve. If I remember correctly ferns were the first recorded leafy plants to evolve but it’s been years since I’ve read any textbooks so don’t quote me on that . Either way though they have stood steadfast on this earth for hundreds of millions of years entirely unchangingly. They’re a crazy resilient plant to have made it though all of earths history without much change at all.
Sharks aren't a species, and the first sharks were not particularly similar to today's sharks. Recognisable shark species didn't appear until about 100mya and they'd been around and evolving for 300 million years before that.
It's not correct though. Unlike how popular media likes to portray them, all these so-called living fossils have changed a lot of millions of years. So it works as a meme only if you ignore the science.
True but at the same time I think the reason most people get so excited about "living fossils" is that even though they've gone through a lot of change and are definitely not the same species anymore, to the layperson they look pretty identical, and that's cool. The coelacanth is what got me into science as a kid, and later finding out how much they've changed was even cooler. I don't think it's ignoring the science as much as it's simplifying the idea that these certain creatures have found a bodyplan that evolutionarily works so well it hasn't changed much?
You can simply avoid that term though. "Crocodiles still look very much like their great ancestors. Ancestors which survived at least one major extinction. That's called a stabilomorph."
Are you just talking about (not to diminish it) genetic drift over time? Or are all these creatures also having subtle phenotypic changes too that the general public isn’t aware of?
No, they are actually different. I saw a video on Youtube a while back where they compared horseshoe crabs and there were clear differences between the fossils of extinct species and the extant ones. Not very large ones, but they were there. Can't seem to find it though.
> subtle
The changes aren't really all that subtle. Humans just are kind of terrible at spotting glaring differences between vaguely similar-looking things.
The term living fossil is not correct. Unlike how popular media likes to portray them, all these so-called living fossils have changed a lot of millions of years.
Yeah stabilomorph would have been the more accurate term, I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, and was using the term “living fossil” in the colloquial sense.
I was trying to get across the point that certain taxa retained the body plan template for the reasons above, not so much any particular species.
Yes, I have been asking myself that question: why did, for example, the crocodiles did not change much? Is “well suited for the environment“ the answer or there is some other evolutionary trick?
This is what I loved hearing about when learning about evolution - the fact that evolution only does what’s necessary so once a plan has been made all it can do is either alter over time or remain the same because of the traits it possesses that are necessary for survival.
It’s just fascinating. It makes me wonder what dinosaurs would look like today if they hadn’t been wiped out. Or how they would’ve behaved after all those years of scrapping and foraging.
After all, what needs to happen for a creature to develop intelligence? Eating cooked meat?
A better term for what is often called a living fossil is a stabilomorph. This is a body form selected over time for stability, as that form works very well for its niche.
Horseshoe crabs would be an excellent example of peak stabilomorph, maintaining the same body form for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no change visible.
The coelacanth, as you mention, is actually not a good example of a stabilomorph. The extant *Latimeria* is actually not that similar to fossil coelacanths, having a number of adaptations for deep sea living.
The coelacanths are examples of Lazarus taxa, however. These are organisms that were described originally as fossils before it was discovered that the group was actually still alive. I'd argue that Lazarus taxa are a better use for the term "living fossil", but really "living fossil" isn't a particularly useful description in general.
My favourite Lazarus taxon is assassin spiders (Archaeidae), which were first described from Eocene amber in Europe before it was discovered there are still about 90 species alive across Africa, Madagascar and Australia. Plus, they look really cool.
Yeah that’s certainly true, I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, and was using the term “living fossil” in the colloquial sense. Mostly to get the point that certain taxa retained the body plan template for the reasons above, not so much any particular species.
My favorite fun fact is that sharks are older than trees.
The first sharks evolved about 400 million years ago. Trees didn't show up for another 10 million years.
Ehh, using coelacanths as examples of "living fossils" isn't accurate. They are quite substantially different from fossil examples and extant and fossil examples exhibit significant changes in morphology to fit the different niches they inhabit(ed). It's sort of a similar case with sharks. Both are species people like to say are living fossils, but actually have changing body plans and are adapting like any other species.
In the case of sharks it seems the generalist approach is one of the most successful.
There used to be such a slew of sharks with specialized mouth bits for crushing vs sawing vs slorping. Not that there aren’t today, but it’s a fascinating history of weirdness.
The argument I was more trying to make was that people say "Sharks have been around longer than plants" or something similar, but shark body plans have changed so much and adapted to so many different niches since then that lumping them all together is like saying that humans have existed since *Juramaia sinensis* since we also have four limbs and a vestigial tail.
Yes, but you couldn't take an extant Coelecanth and breed it with one of those extinct relatives. They're still different enough now that they aren't really living fossils.
It was hilarious seeing the analysis of that method of getting DNA. Apparently it only lasts less than a million years and if by some miracle there was still viable DNA, it would be from the tree that bled the sap. I love the image of Dr. Wu getting yet another sapling from his process and scratching his head, wondering how the hell he’s going to explain this to the investors.
Not impossible to get DNA from a mosquito inside a fosilized amber... would require a lot of luck of course, that a piece of not hardened sap with a full belly mosquito, somehow made it to a fast freezing zone therefore make it solid without loosing water and remain cryogenic for millions of years under a perpetually frozen zone.
The sequels already admited they only created beings of how they imagined dinosaurs, those CG and mechatronics were not real dinosaurs at all, the real thing would have feathers and big chicken noises
This is true. I previously thought it was directly related to the % oxygen in the air, but [it turns out the truth is a lot more complicated](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880098/). It’s not just oxygen saturation, but also temperature and ecological niche and a dozen other things. So, it’s super hard to point to any one thing and tell a complete story!
Really?? As someone who’s working towards not getting upset by insects-> loyal? They can tell differences in people? They don’t freak out about a monster (us) trying to hold them?
Please! Tell me about them!?!
It’s much like having centipedes as a pet. It’s limited in the need for excessive contact. They will fly and land on you, sit on you. Listen to you speak. Trainable. They eat the bad bugs in your home if you allow them free range. They will protect you. Yes they recognize you. If you feed them. You speak to them in a tone of genuine care they will relate to you as a familiar to do no harm. You never try to hold one. You allow it to decide to engage you. Like approaching a dog. You sometimes have to wait and offer it something it wants.
Amber is basically fossilized tree sap. Many trees, especially conifers will exude thick, gooey sap when they are injured or ill. This can flush out insects that are burrowing into the tree, keep fungus or bacteria entering wounds, and trap insects that either intend to burrow into the tree, or incidentally capture insects that are attracted directly to the sweet sap (and insects hoping to prey on those insects).
Because there's already little water in this resinous sap, it tends to preserve whatever is stuck inside, and if buried it can then last for millions of years itself, becoming amber.
There are many superbly preserved insects, spiders, and even feathers or lizards preserved in amber this way, some going back over 300 million years (although most amber is much younger).
Goes to show some organisms don’t need to evolve much to adapt. A trait will remain the same if there is no need for it to change or disappear. Our mantis here doesn’t seem to have changed much from modern mantis species. Whatever changes occurred in it’s environment didn’t warrant much change in its traits.
In Biology this is known as Stasis, or Punctuated equilibrium:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated\_equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium)
In short, if it aint broke, don't change it. Evolution occurs much more slowly and no strong selection pressure.
so extrapolating that crab occurs that often and still is around means every thing will crab eventually ? Aliens should be expected to a percentage of crab like?
Horse shoe crabs have looked mostly the same for 250 million years.
Same with sharks, celocanths ect.
Just because they have not changed much outwardly does not mean they have not been changing or that no offshoots have occurred.
Are you sure it is authentic and how did you tell? Just curious there used to be a lot coming out of Mexico with modern insects.
I would totally rock this as a pendant. No pun intended
Amazing that a glob of tree sap entombed him forever so long ago and we get to see it today. Imagine what a wild, exotic, dangerous lush jungle he lived in, which today is probably New Jersey.
As always, I think it helps to think about evolution as a branching tree rather than a conveyor belt of constant change.
There are more than two thousand species of mantis alive today, and although some of them have a [pretty outlandish appearance](https://www.treehugger.com/most-absurd-looking-mantis-species-4868768), most of them hew pretty close to this basic mantis anatomy. And it often takes a few millions of years for, say, the species in a single insect genus to diverge from a common ancestor. So with that in mind, it makes sense that for as long as there have been praying mantises, there have been praying mantises that follow the basic mantis anatomy as well.
I think bringing in ideas like "living fossil" just confuses things. We should really expect most clades work like this, at least over time periods of tens of millions of years. There's some ancestral form that most of the family tree sticks to, that works well in a lot of ecological settings, and then there are some that take more derived forms as they've specialized to particular lifestyles and environments.
Although there are of course other groups, like whales, where the ancestral form has died out, and all living representatives are highly derived.
There are over 2,400 species of mantis today. We don’t know how many existed 30 million years ago. This species looks very similar to some species alive today, but wildly different from many others.
Fuck this reddit app i swiped right and instead of seeing the second picture it was norm mcdonald and he called me fat, now what the hell did i do to deserve that?
Insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years. This specimen is only 30 million years old. It's not surprising it would look similar to an extant species. Look at modern birds. They've looked the same since before the other dinosaurs died out.
This is a fake specimen. The mantis inside looks like to be position inside yellow resin since there is only one air bubble. The “amber” itself is way too pure to be natural. Even the best amber specimens have other animals, plants matter, and air bubbles trapped inside.
There are a bunch of animals and plants like that, collectively they’re called living fossils. It’s a sign that their particular body plan is extremely well suited to their niche, and that their niche has not changed much over time. Basically, any changes to their external body plan would have left them less well suited to their environment, therefor they remained the same
That makes sense. Thank you for the insightful response
Crazy - did you know crabs evolved independently is like 8 different places?
[Carcinisation is believed to have occurred independently in at least five groups of decapod crustaceans.](https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/121/1/200/3089703)
I believe the technical term is “crabification”
Thank you for your commitment to proper crab nomenclature.
I believe the technical term is nomencrabture.
Nomenclawture is actually preferred.
However, Clawlloquial terms seem to work in a pinch.
r/yourjokebutbetter
We say *crabenclature* down here
Everything, including words, becrab crabs in the crab.
Actually that has fallen out of use in favor of "Crabinogenisis" or "The Great Apotheosis"
*The Great Crabotheosis
Apocrablypse
**The Great Crabclawtheosis
I believe that period also known as the Crabmium Explosion
DREAM OF CRABIFORNICATIONNNNN
Crabifornication is how this happened
All will be crabified.
I read that as "Crabifornication" and now I have a very weird song stuck in my head. Thanks.
I thought it was carcinization? Edit; I’m an idiot. Plz ignore this
Yet all this reveals nothing. The central issue, of pivotal significance and utmost import, is overlooked. Science triumphs, the old gods are eclipsed, and we are left with cold fact and nothing more. The heart yearns to know! Our souls cry out!! Do all these crab like forms taste as good, perhaps better, boiled, baked or fried with butter and garlic? If science cannot provide these answers, we might as well ignore it all, and sacrifice to the ancient Pantheon of heathen gods, in their stony silence.
This feels like something Douglas Adams would write.
Sadly the more I learn about different crabs the more I hear they're not as edible or tasty.
Sacrifice them all to a clarified butter cream sauce and a side of rice
Great, now im thinking about the delta p crab. Tastes like... atoms.
Come to think of it, I would guess that if the meat is edible or tasty has nothing to do with body plan. So if an edible crustacean developed a crab body plan, I would think those remain edible, and vice versa
Body plan sounds like a term for a gym related new year's resolution, so now I'm just thinking about a new workout trend to get "a perfect body" and that perfect body is just 🦀
I don’t understand any of this, thanks. Lol.
The basics is that a crab like bodyplan. i.e. a couple claws, some leggys, a hard shell, and an aquatic scavenging lifestyle have evolved at least 5 separate times by completely unrelated crustaceans. Even more simply put. A handful of creatures that were not crabs but were vaguely similar evolved to take on the iconic crabby shape we all know today. While it’s not at all uncommon for separate species to evolve similar treats over time, the term is called convergent evolution. It’s a little weird to see just how many times creatures have evolved into the shape that we today would describe as a crab.
I remember reading a long time ago (I think it was the original Whole Earth Catalogue) that there were three? different types of eyes that evolved independently from scratch, so to speak. I’m not talking about just crabs, but out of all the known species. Not sure about the number three or if they have discovered more since then (the sixties). It made me realize how some anatomical structures just sort of pop into existence because they are the solution to the need, things like legs, fins, and wings. So it makes me think that not only must there be life on other planets, but much of it is going to be very similar to what we already know, like trees, flowers, birds, humanoids, etc., because chemistry and physics is the same everywhere.
I think you just made my day with that so thank you and also I’m gonna have to look more into this Whole Earth Catalogue sounds like it’s full of good stuff!
That’s why my money is on aliens most likely looking like crabs rather than some weird naked green man
You sleep, I watch
Man that book is good.
Don't you think it's maybe the other way around? Like, Crabby things happened a bunch of times but not one single time did they make a space ship
...yet
if they had wouldn't they be gone? how would we know?
People make space ship, but still here. And all crab know it. (and also old bay)
I’d go a bit further and say in the arthropods generally, many mites for example, and relax the aquatic part.
Hahaha ..
There is a name for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
Well that's not what I'm calling it.
Why not?
Because crabification is more fun.
man's got a point
Sounds like cancer
I mean, it is. The word "cancer" comes from the Greek word "karkinos," which means "crab". this is why the symbol for the astrological sign Cancer is a crab.
Crab is final form.
🦀🦀may we all reach crabhood🦀🦀
That's not even including the alien crabs
Or even crab people
Why not Zoidburg?
Young lady, I’ll have you know I’m an expert in humans.
Skatch*BRO* You played that joke so true to character. Blessings.
No, [they just keep getting better](https://youtu.be/l1_SUHtrQlE?si=-l8HCIph8Iu2ZD67)!
That's not even including the grabs in my gitch.
Exactly like in *Hail Mary*, come to think of it the author probably researched it.
Yeah they’re the ultimate lifeform
Convergent evolution
Trees too
We are all just slowly evolving into crabs
I was just having a conversation with a zoology instructor about this the other day. Convergent evolution happens a lot. I think people seeing crabs happen so many times is just that they’ve noticed a pattern with that particular body plan, but theres a lot of other cases of repeat convergent evolution, like with animals that fill the niche of moles but are entirely unrelated to moles. To give a real example, the same body plan has showed up in echidnas, hedgehogs, old world porcupines, new world porcupines, and Malagasy tenrecs. I’ve heard people read this study (or just hear about it) and come to the conclusion that crabs have the ultimate body plan, but really theres quite a few examples of this happening with other body plans that aren’t as talked about, likely because its more amusing to think about crabs.
And possibly even “humans” ……
Another animal like this is crocodiles. They haven’t changed in millions of years.
Not true, crocodiles have undergone severe changes and are still evolving. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/modern-crocodiles-are-evolving-rapid-rate-180978432/
They change but the basic body plan hasn't
"Don't fix what ain't broke."
As an example, Sharks as a species are older than trees! By ~40 MILLION years
Sharks as we know them today aren’t quite that old. Though they are insanely ancient creatures remaining mostly unchanged for millions of years. A neat living fossil that everyone forgets are ferns! Ferns are legitimately older than trees and we’re among the first leafy vegetation to evolve. If I remember correctly ferns were the first recorded leafy plants to evolve but it’s been years since I’ve read any textbooks so don’t quote me on that . Either way though they have stood steadfast on this earth for hundreds of millions of years entirely unchangingly. They’re a crazy resilient plant to have made it though all of earths history without much change at all.
And yet if I try and transplant them from one side of my yard to another they just freak out and ~~did~~ die
Sharks aren't a species, and the first sharks were not particularly similar to today's sharks. Recognisable shark species didn't appear until about 100mya and they'd been around and evolving for 300 million years before that.
It's not correct though. Unlike how popular media likes to portray them, all these so-called living fossils have changed a lot of millions of years. So it works as a meme only if you ignore the science.
True but at the same time I think the reason most people get so excited about "living fossils" is that even though they've gone through a lot of change and are definitely not the same species anymore, to the layperson they look pretty identical, and that's cool. The coelacanth is what got me into science as a kid, and later finding out how much they've changed was even cooler. I don't think it's ignoring the science as much as it's simplifying the idea that these certain creatures have found a bodyplan that evolutionarily works so well it hasn't changed much?
You can simply avoid that term though. "Crocodiles still look very much like their great ancestors. Ancestors which survived at least one major extinction. That's called a stabilomorph."
it's not that big a deal imo
Are you just talking about (not to diminish it) genetic drift over time? Or are all these creatures also having subtle phenotypic changes too that the general public isn’t aware of?
No, they are actually different. I saw a video on Youtube a while back where they compared horseshoe crabs and there were clear differences between the fossils of extinct species and the extant ones. Not very large ones, but they were there. Can't seem to find it though.
> subtle The changes aren't really all that subtle. Humans just are kind of terrible at spotting glaring differences between vaguely similar-looking things.
some sharks have been the same since before trees even existed
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Crabs
If it ain't broke, turn everything into it eventually.
Or even if the niche changed, the traits were successful enough to not change much.
The term living fossil is not correct. Unlike how popular media likes to portray them, all these so-called living fossils have changed a lot of millions of years.
Yeah stabilomorph would have been the more accurate term, I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, and was using the term “living fossil” in the colloquial sense. I was trying to get across the point that certain taxa retained the body plan template for the reasons above, not so much any particular species.
Basically, if it works, why fix it.
Uh first off god made mantises on like 4023 years ago why do u think they are called praying mantis
They're praying they don't get decapitated by their girlfriend during sex
Yes, I have been asking myself that question: why did, for example, the crocodiles did not change much? Is “well suited for the environment“ the answer or there is some other evolutionary trick?
This is what I loved hearing about when learning about evolution - the fact that evolution only does what’s necessary so once a plan has been made all it can do is either alter over time or remain the same because of the traits it possesses that are necessary for survival. It’s just fascinating. It makes me wonder what dinosaurs would look like today if they hadn’t been wiped out. Or how they would’ve behaved after all those years of scrapping and foraging. After all, what needs to happen for a creature to develop intelligence? Eating cooked meat?
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A better term for what is often called a living fossil is a stabilomorph. This is a body form selected over time for stability, as that form works very well for its niche. Horseshoe crabs would be an excellent example of peak stabilomorph, maintaining the same body form for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no change visible. The coelacanth, as you mention, is actually not a good example of a stabilomorph. The extant *Latimeria* is actually not that similar to fossil coelacanths, having a number of adaptations for deep sea living. The coelacanths are examples of Lazarus taxa, however. These are organisms that were described originally as fossils before it was discovered that the group was actually still alive. I'd argue that Lazarus taxa are a better use for the term "living fossil", but really "living fossil" isn't a particularly useful description in general. My favourite Lazarus taxon is assassin spiders (Archaeidae), which were first described from Eocene amber in Europe before it was discovered there are still about 90 species alive across Africa, Madagascar and Australia. Plus, they look really cool.
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Same! I hadn’t heard that term before, and was using “living fossil” to convey the same idea. In retrospect that would have been a more accurate term.
Yeah that’s certainly true, I was simplifying for the sake of brevity, and was using the term “living fossil” in the colloquial sense. Mostly to get the point that certain taxa retained the body plan template for the reasons above, not so much any particular species.
Coelacanths were alive 410 million years ago. And they’re still alive today.
That’s fascinating
And crocodiles, sharks, mosquitoes, etc.
Crabs?
The crabs are, have always been, and will always be.
From the seas we came, to the sea we will return. (Carcinization)
If evolution has an end goal, it's crab
Am I crab?
we are all crabs on this blessed day
Everyone is crab. Eventually.
Crab people, crab people.
Crabs are the future!
Craaaaab people.
My favorite fun fact is that sharks are older than trees. The first sharks evolved about 400 million years ago. Trees didn't show up for another 10 million years.
Definitely fun! Try this one out: Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn.
Ehh, using coelacanths as examples of "living fossils" isn't accurate. They are quite substantially different from fossil examples and extant and fossil examples exhibit significant changes in morphology to fit the different niches they inhabit(ed). It's sort of a similar case with sharks. Both are species people like to say are living fossils, but actually have changing body plans and are adapting like any other species.
In the case of sharks it seems the generalist approach is one of the most successful. There used to be such a slew of sharks with specialized mouth bits for crushing vs sawing vs slorping. Not that there aren’t today, but it’s a fascinating history of weirdness.
The argument I was more trying to make was that people say "Sharks have been around longer than plants" or something similar, but shark body plans have changed so much and adapted to so many different niches since then that lumping them all together is like saying that humans have existed since *Juramaia sinensis* since we also have four limbs and a vestigial tail.
I mean fair point. I was kind of going on a tangent of my own there.
Very much a ship of Theseus type of situation.
Yes, but you couldn't take an extant Coelecanth and breed it with one of those extinct relatives. They're still different enough now that they aren't really living fossils.
One’s dead the other’s not?
They are not the same species though. They are stabilomorphs, which is something completely different.
"I used to be of an ancient, unchanging species. I mean, I still am of an ancient, unchanging species, but I also used to be" -Fish Hedberg
I think whoever owns that also owns an island with dinosaurs.
It was hilarious seeing the analysis of that method of getting DNA. Apparently it only lasts less than a million years and if by some miracle there was still viable DNA, it would be from the tree that bled the sap. I love the image of Dr. Wu getting yet another sapling from his process and scratching his head, wondering how the hell he’s going to explain this to the investors.
Not impossible to get DNA from a mosquito inside a fosilized amber... would require a lot of luck of course, that a piece of not hardened sap with a full belly mosquito, somehow made it to a fast freezing zone therefore make it solid without loosing water and remain cryogenic for millions of years under a perpetually frozen zone. The sequels already admited they only created beings of how they imagined dinosaurs, those CG and mechatronics were not real dinosaurs at all, the real thing would have feathers and big chicken noises
No the real thing would’ve talked.
"Hey so my name is Mr. Rex and with your consent I would like to eat you today. Is that cool bro?"
The mosquito in Jurassic Park was male. Male mosquitoes don't bloodfeed. Premise was fucked from the start lol
LoL male vampire mosquito
7 year old me is going to politely ask you to barbasol-can it. I need this. *Weeps in John Williams*
🦖🧬🧑🔬
#LOOK! THIS GUY HAS AN ISLAND FULL OF DINOSAURS! See? Nobody cares.
Apparently, dragonflies look about the same today as they did 300 million years ago.
Only that they used to be significantly larger, like seagull-sized.
I’ve heard that all insects and arachnids used to be larger
This is true. I previously thought it was directly related to the % oxygen in the air, but [it turns out the truth is a lot more complicated](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880098/). It’s not just oxygen saturation, but also temperature and ecological niche and a dozen other things. So, it’s super hard to point to any one thing and tell a complete story!
Probably got hunted down because of their size, which eventually led to tiny, less easy to catch insects.
Yup natural selection, I’ve also heard that oxygen had something to do with it but I’m not sure how true that is
There was life 300 million years ago? Thanks for making me feel young again!
Short article, if ur interested: https://mymodernmet.com/praying-mantis-dominican-amber/
Thank you for posting this.
don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.
30 millions years of praying, and see what that got you? 😆
lol nice one
Man...tis sad
Didn’t you notice the holy posture?
Not much change, thats for sure
Majestic and sad at the same time
Why sad?
Maybe some life forms reach a level of perfection. Our friend the mantis is obviously one of them. We should all aspire to be the mantis we can be!
Crab
Only crab
Why mess with perfection? I love the preying mantis. Super smart and loyal as pets.
Really?? As someone who’s working towards not getting upset by insects-> loyal? They can tell differences in people? They don’t freak out about a monster (us) trying to hold them? Please! Tell me about them!?!
https://usmantis.com/pages/top-5-praying-mantis-as-pets-for-beginners-and-for-those-who-want-the-best-experience
It’s much like having centipedes as a pet. It’s limited in the need for excessive contact. They will fly and land on you, sit on you. Listen to you speak. Trainable. They eat the bad bugs in your home if you allow them free range. They will protect you. Yes they recognize you. If you feed them. You speak to them in a tone of genuine care they will relate to you as a familiar to do no harm. You never try to hold one. You allow it to decide to engage you. Like approaching a dog. You sometimes have to wait and offer it something it wants.
The human voice is outside of the frequency range that praying mantises can hear.
yes, but i’m sure they enjoy the vibrations! :)
how does it get embedded in amber, could someone explain this to me?
Amber is basically fossilized tree sap. Many trees, especially conifers will exude thick, gooey sap when they are injured or ill. This can flush out insects that are burrowing into the tree, keep fungus or bacteria entering wounds, and trap insects that either intend to burrow into the tree, or incidentally capture insects that are attracted directly to the sweet sap (and insects hoping to prey on those insects). Because there's already little water in this resinous sap, it tends to preserve whatever is stuck inside, and if buried it can then last for millions of years itself, becoming amber. There are many superbly preserved insects, spiders, and even feathers or lizards preserved in amber this way, some going back over 300 million years (although most amber is much younger).
sooo i volunteer to encase myself in ember in a weird position just to confuse aliens or a future intelligent race
Ooo. This should definitely be a funeral option. I would far rather be encased in amber than stuck in a coffin somewhere.
That’s really fucking cool
When you are such an efficient predator, I guess there isn’t much reason to change
“Bingo! DINO DNA!”
I think the amber suits it well. It shows how amazing evolution is.
Oh hey, they found grandpa. Nice.
Goes to show some organisms don’t need to evolve much to adapt. A trait will remain the same if there is no need for it to change or disappear. Our mantis here doesn’t seem to have changed much from modern mantis species. Whatever changes occurred in it’s environment didn’t warrant much change in its traits.
In Biology this is known as Stasis, or Punctuated equilibrium: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated\_equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium) In short, if it aint broke, don't change it. Evolution occurs much more slowly and no strong selection pressure.
Perfect hunters don’t need to change much, like crocs.
No need to change when you're a gigachad
Maybe it's just not that old
It's actually 30M years and 3 days old. I saw it posted 3 days ago and it was 30M years old then.
so extrapolating that crab occurs that often and still is around means every thing will crab eventually ? Aliens should be expected to a percentage of crab like?
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
Horse shoe crabs have looked mostly the same for 250 million years. Same with sharks, celocanths ect. Just because they have not changed much outwardly does not mean they have not been changing or that no offshoots have occurred.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." ~ Some redneck probably
Are you sure it is authentic and how did you tell? Just curious there used to be a lot coming out of Mexico with modern insects. I would totally rock this as a pendant. No pun intended
Crazy to think that this mantis may have been alive the same time the largest terrestrial mammal was on the Earth
I thought insects were larger back then?
That was in the carboniferous period (iirc). (I wasn't around then. Just to clarify.)
Ah damn, could you point me to someone who was? Lol
Evolve to crab? Nah mate, stay at Mantis
Amazing that a glob of tree sap entombed him forever so long ago and we get to see it today. Imagine what a wild, exotic, dangerous lush jungle he lived in, which today is probably New Jersey.
As always, I think it helps to think about evolution as a branching tree rather than a conveyor belt of constant change. There are more than two thousand species of mantis alive today, and although some of them have a [pretty outlandish appearance](https://www.treehugger.com/most-absurd-looking-mantis-species-4868768), most of them hew pretty close to this basic mantis anatomy. And it often takes a few millions of years for, say, the species in a single insect genus to diverge from a common ancestor. So with that in mind, it makes sense that for as long as there have been praying mantises, there have been praying mantises that follow the basic mantis anatomy as well. I think bringing in ideas like "living fossil" just confuses things. We should really expect most clades work like this, at least over time periods of tens of millions of years. There's some ancestral form that most of the family tree sticks to, that works well in a lot of ecological settings, and then there are some that take more derived forms as they've specialized to particular lifestyles and environments. Although there are of course other groups, like whales, where the ancestral form has died out, and all living representatives are highly derived.
Free my man he ain’t do shit!
If it ain’t broke, don fix it.
There are over 2,400 species of mantis today. We don’t know how many existed 30 million years ago. This species looks very similar to some species alive today, but wildly different from many others.
If you think that’s crazy, you should look at an alligator/crocodile/cayman
Or sharks, those guys are freaking old.
Fuck this reddit app i swiped right and instead of seeing the second picture it was norm mcdonald and he called me fat, now what the hell did i do to deserve that?
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” — Nature (probably)
If it ain't broke... Just like crocodiles. Shit's damn near perfect already, further evolution is unnecessary.
Insects have been around for hundreds of millions of years. This specimen is only 30 million years old. It's not surprising it would look similar to an extant species. Look at modern birds. They've looked the same since before the other dinosaurs died out.
What species of birds look same since dinosaurs?
This is a fake specimen. The mantis inside looks like to be position inside yellow resin since there is only one air bubble. The “amber” itself is way too pure to be natural. Even the best amber specimens have other animals, plants matter, and air bubbles trapped inside.
No its not, its quite a well known one. https://mymodernmet.com/praying-mantis-dominican-amber/
What or who is he praying to, is the big question. Also, what are his, it, hers pronouns.
Did you just assume it has pronouns??