russell

@russell@ecoevo.social

I do science with #fossils, X-rays and #computers at the University of Manchester. Also do the Palaeontological Assocation web systems. I like #evolution, coding, πŸ•·οΈπŸͺ³, music and movies.

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russell, to science

For , meet Archaboilus musicus. This is a 165 million year old katydid, or bush cricket. It's not a very complete fossil - below you can see a wing, which is the only bit of the animal we have. But, from this we can actually tell what noise the insect made in life.

russell, to science

For meet the Titanoptera. Specifically this ~245 million year old wing of one! These creatures were large relatives of orthopterans (a group including e.g. grasshoppers, locusts and crickets). They reached ~40 cm in wingspan, and are only known from the Triassic Period.

russell, to science

Interested in archnid origins and how the group moved from living in water to living on land? Or the group's slightly messy phylogeny? Here is the latest from myself and Jason Dunlop, looking at these topics, informed by the fossil record:

https://arages.de/user_upload/user_upload/AM66_02_16.pdf

russell, to science

Fun discovery for today - the etymology of 'boot' as in to boot a computer, comes from the idiom to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps - to start you have to load software, but in order to do so, you have to be running first. Thus booting pulls the computer up by its bootstraps.

russell, to random

New discovery in the category "graves with threatening auras"

russell, to science

Ever wondered what creepy-crawlies were around when the dinosaurs were walking the Earth? Well, in the case of the arachnids, these little guys were generally fairly similar to the groups still alive today! Case in point, meet a 165 million-year-old harvestman for

A close up of the body of the animal from above (top left) and below (top right), which is a dark blob with some visible segments and other bits of anatomy. There is a line drawing of the fossil on the bottom of the image. Between these is a close up of the legs of the animal.

russell, to science

For the last of , meet a Phalangiotarbid arachnid. Phalangiotarbids are members of an extinct arachnid order - a fossil in siderite of one is shown left, and a CT scan and 3D reconstruction of that shown right. This fossil is around ~315 million years old. Members of this order aren't found in rocks younger than ~280 million years old - so the group went extinct at some point after this.

A CT scan of the fossil shown in the other image - this includes close ups of two limbs, top left and right, in light and drak puple, its ventral anterior, top middle, and then a dorsal and ventral view of the fossil, bottom. Butied in the rocks are its legs - coloured in purple here on the 3D model revealed by the CT scan.

russell, to science

For and meet a lovely fossil scorpion. This is Waeringoscorpio. It is 395 million years old (scale bar 5mm), and those weird structures sticking out of the side have been interpreted to be external gills.

russell, to science

For and here are some ~100 million year old spiders from South Korea. These animals were probably preserved when rivers washed their remains into large lakes/basins associated with the plate tectonic movements of the time.

russell, to science

russell, to random

What's up y'all? Check out this treehopper.

(Photo by Matthew Cicanese)

russell, to nature

For meet the kalligrammatids. The ~180 million year old fossil below is from Kazakhstan, and may look like a butterfly, but it is in fact a lacewing (a member of the order Neuroptera). This family convergently evolved traits that we associate with butterflies.

russell,

These large insects had patterned wings - some even had eyespots similar to those found on large moths, presumably with the same function startling predators. The example below, slightly younger than the last fossil, is from China, and shows this really nicely.

russell,

Here are a bunch more fossils from China of this group, showing the range of patterns you see, even in the fossil record.

russell, to nature

For check out this beautifully preserved fossil millipede This is Pleurojulus, a 305 million year old animal from the USA. The fossil preserves details including the head (marked h, in the top image), with chewing mouthparts (marked m).

russell, to science

Today be like

russell, to science

Given I'm working on a paper on this little critter today, for , let me introduce Arthropleura. This genus is famous for large (~2.5m long examples), but it's actually the smaller ones - such as this 305 million year old example from france - that are better preserved. Isn't it cute?

russell,

Fragments of big ones examples are usually isolated plates, but here is a 42cm monster from Schneider et al (2010, black and white), and a ~75 cm bit of one from Davies et al (2021, colour). We also know they got big from their trackways. For a long time we were not sure if these creatures were . Nowadays most people accept they are. So, why did they get so big? We often highlight the large amounts of Oxygen in the atmosphere at this time in Earth history as a cause.

A photo of a 75 cm arthropleurid fossil in a slab of rock - the rock is a sandstone, and the fossil is a segmented, off brown/tan imprint on the surface It is one side and a bit of the middle of the animal.

russell,

This has received support in the insects:
royalsocietypublishing.org/...
pnas.org/content/109/27/109...
Which have a similar breathing system. So it's plausible here too. But I suspect there were other factors at play too! It needs more work. I'll leave you with this gorgeous reconstruction of an arthropleurid hanging out with a Eryops, from Martino & Greb (2009).

russell,

@NatureMC ooops, thanks for catching that and the heads up - the missing http:// was not the only error there. My bad 😬

russell, to science

Ever wondered what creepy-crawlies were around when the dinosaurs were walking the Earth? Well, in the case of the arachnids, those little guys were generally fairly similar to the groups still alive today! Case in point, meet a 165 million-year-old harvestman for . This little dude (it is a dude - it has a penis preserved), is called Mesobunus martensi.

A high resolution image of the body of this fossil harvestman in black and white. It's a bit squashed, TBH, and it's kinda hard to see what much of it is...

russell, to science

Sometimes, Wikipedia comes up trumps - thanks to Slate Weasel for putting together this comparison of some of the largest chelicerates (chelicerates = archnids and their kin) to have lived.

These little (massive) dudes and dudettes are sea scorpions, or eurypterids - probably not closely related to living scorpions, but some of them looked alike. They were marine animals, and went extinct a little over 250 million years ago

russell, to science

Who wants to see a 300 million year old volcanic bomb?

Behold, courtesy of Fife.

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