Sometimes I create so many destructive monsters even I can’t keep track of them. Thanks to genetically engineered Sea Scorpions I picked up during a routine trip back in prehistoric time I created monstrous versions that served me well for years, but several were lost during a mission once again in the past. I collected three of the five killed Sea Scorpions, but the two that I couldn’t locate have since then fossilized and been discovered by humans. I will let them take the claim for this one, as it was my carelessness that allowed their discovery in the first place. Never again will I leave a creature behind.

Scientists find fossil of enormous bug

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 21, 7:54 AM ET

LONDON – This was a bug you couldn’t swat and definitely couldn’t step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.

How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.

The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study’s three authors.

“This is an amazing discovery,” he said Tuesday.

“We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were,” he said.

The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.

The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today’s average man is tall.

Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about “the last of the giant scorpions.”

Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions “were dominant for millions of years because they didn’t have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth.”

Braddy’s partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.

“I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw,” said Poschmann, another author of the study.

“Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it,” he said.

Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today’s scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.

Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.

He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an “arms race” alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.

Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.

“The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves.”

That competition ended long ago.

But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to “think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn’t want to swat one of those.”

Astronomers the world over have discovered one of my giant comet experiments, and have mistaken it for an actual star that is trailing debris. Instead, it is a self-contained comet the size of a sun, designed to last billions of years. Part of my obsessive desire to create a comet that will last until the end of the universe. I, Dr. Mobusu, will succeed in creating such a comet, and the universe will know my greatness. Now, my greatness only will last several billion years, hardly long enough to celebrate my life and achievements. My space station laboratory has created several unique monstrosities like this, will the rest of Earth’s scientists get around to discovering them all? I think not! For they only have a small bit of the intellect I have stored in my little finger. Keep your eyes open, for my celestial creations may appear at any time.

Astronomers surprised by star with comet-like tail

By Will Dunham Wed Aug 15, 4:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A large star in its death throes is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space, astronomers said on Wednesday.

Nothing like this has ever previously been witnessed in a star, according to scientists who detected it using NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting space telescope that observes the cosmos in ultraviolet light.

This tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years, was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the “whale” constellation Cetus.

“There’s a star with a tail in the tail of the whale,” said one of the researchers, astronomer Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.

A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.

Rocketing through our Milky Way galaxy at 80 miles per second (130 km per second) — literally faster than a speeding bullet — the star is spewing material that scientists believe may be recycled into new stars, planets and maybe even life.

“We believe that the tail is made up of material that is being shed by the star which is heating up and then spiraling back into this turbulent wake,” said astronomer Christopher Martin of California Institute of Technology, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.

Mira is a so-called “red giant” star near the end of its life. Astronomers believe our sun will become a similar red giant in 4 to 5 billion years, but they doubt it will develop such a tail because it is not moving through space as quickly.

‘PHOENIX-LIKE REVIVALS’

“It’s giving us this fantastic insight into the death processes of stars and their renewals — their phoenix-like revivals as their ashes get cycled backed into the next generation of stars,” added Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University in New York.

Shara said he expects that as this telescope continues mapping the cosmos in ultraviolet light for the first time, other similar stars may be discovered. “There must be lots more of these things,” Shara said.

NASA images show the tail as a glowing light-blue stream of material including oxygen, carbon and nitrogen.

This material has been blown off Mira gradually over time — the oldest was released roughly 30,000 years ago as part of a long stellar death process — and is enough to form at least 3,000 future Earth-sized planets, the scientists said.

The astronomers were surprised to find this unique feature in Mira, a well-known star studied since the 16th century. Mira (pronounced MY-rah) stems from the Latin word for “wonderful.”

Despite having about the same mass as the sun, Mira has swollen up to over 400 times the size of the sun, meaning the force of gravity is having a hard time holding it together, Seibert said.

The tail stretching 13 light-years is thousands of times the length of our solar system. The nearest star to Earth, called Proxima Centauri, is located 4 light-years away.

While this star looks like a comet, stars and comets are quite different celestial bodies. Comets in our solar system are relatively small objects made up of rock, dust and ice trailed by a tail of gas and dust.

Unlike our solitary sun, Mira is a so-called binary star traveling through space orbiting a companion believed to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, known as a white dwarf.

Scientists think Mira in time will eject all its gas, leaving a colorful shell known as a planetary nebula that also gradually will fade leaving behind a white dwarf.

The so-called world’s leggiest animal, aka the animal with the most legs, has returned from the depths of extinction. Well, at least as far as the mainstream scientists know. I’ve been growing the Illacme plenipes since 1966, and used it’s many leg gene in my diabolical creation, the Ten-Thousand Legged Mammoth! Sadly, Stampy died when my explosive gum machine malfunctioned and exploded. We feasted on Mammoth drumlegs for months!

Yahoo News

World’s leggiest animal makes rare reappearance

LONDON (Reuters) – An extremely rare species of millipede, and the one that comes closest to having 1,000 legs, has made its first appearance in 80 years.

The Illacme plenipes species had not been seen since it was first spotted in a biodiversity hotspot in California in 1926.

But Paul Marek and Professor Jason Bond of East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina recently discovered 12 of the elusive thread-like creatures that measure about 33 mm (1.3 inch) in length.

“It has the most number of legs of any animal on the planet,” Marek said in an interview. “It is also an extremely rare species that has not been seen for 80 years.”

The scientists found the millipedes during trips to California. Another quirky characteristic of the creatures is that they only live in a moist, wooded area measuring less than 1 sq km (0.6 sq miles) in San Benito County, California.

Marek and Bond, who were funded by the
National Science Foundation, found four males, three females and five juveniles. The females had up to 666 legs, slightly fewer than the known record holder, according to the research published in the journal Nature.

The males had between 318 and 402 legs. Scientists do not know why, despite their name which means 1,000 feet, the maximum number of known appendages on a millipede is 750.

Marek said the discovery of the rare creatures highlighted the need to preserve biological diversity.