How can a spider be fossilized then 165 million years later we can still see its hairs?
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Plectreuridae spider (Eoplectreurys gertschi) fossilized in Northern China
Spiders are soft material animals so are very hard to be fossilized. Yet in China they have found the fossilised body of a 165 million year old spider, Eoplectreurys gertschi, that is so well preserved you can see its individual hairs. What this means is that the spider was buried, died, covered over with more layers, earth has moved, earthquakes etc for 165 million years yet it looks like it was buried recently.
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fossilized spiders with individual hairs of the Eoplectreurys gertschi in Daohugou China 165 million years ago or recenlty and instantly?
Was this spider fossilized 165 million years ago or was it very recent? Why does it not look like it is struggling in a death throw? Was it fossilized instantly along with everything else found around it?
"Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer." Why does it look like the ones we have today? After 165 million years of evolution?
Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found
Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years.
The level of detail preserved in the fossils is amazing, said paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and lead author of the study appearing Feb. 6 in Naturwissenschaften. “You go in with a microscope, and bingo! It’s fantastic.”
The fossils were found at a site called Daohugou in Northern China that is filled with fossilized salamanders, small primitive mammals, insects and water crustaceans. During the Jurassic era, the fossil bed was part of a lake in a volcanic region, Selden said.
Spider fossils from this period are rare, because the arachnids’ soft bodies don’t preserve well. The pristine fossil pictured in these photos was probably created when the spider was trapped in volcanic ash. The ultrafine clay particles squashed the spider without breaking up the animals’ delicate cuticle as more coarse sediment would, Selden said.
E. gertschi shows all the features of the modern members of the family, found in North America, suggesting it has evolved very little since the Jurassic period, Selden said. “The scimitar-shaped structure you notice out of the male is so distinctive,” he said. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer.”
The findings also suggest this family of spiders, the Plectreuridae, was once much more widespread than it is today. Currently, the family has only been found living in California, Arizona, Mexico and Cuba. Yet 165 million years ago, they lived on a small continent called the North China Block.
“At some point something caused their range to contract to this part of southern North America,” Selden said. He speculates that changes in vegetation during an ice age or other climactic event wiped them out in other areas, “but they were still happy in these arid areas of the Southwest.”
Citation: “The oldest haplogyne spider (Araneae: Plectreuridae), from the Middle Jurassic of China” Paul A. Selden and Diying Huang, Naturwissenschaften, 6 Feb. 2010.
Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found | wired.com (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/spider-fossil/)
evidence and proof that fossilization is instant
They have found pairs of mating turtles and yet will not believe that fossilization is an instant event. Perhaps caused by Electric Universe catastrophes that have struck the earth on many occasions in our past?
So BOTH the mating turtles were slowly poisoned while sinking through water and BOTH did not struggle at all and remained in the same position?
we report from the Eocene Messel Pit Fossil Site between Darmstadt and Frankfurt, Germany numerous pairs of the fossil carettochelyid turtle Allaeochelys crassesculpta that represent for the first time among fossil vertebrates couples that perished during copulation. Females of this taxon can be distinguished from males by their relatively shorter tails and development of plastral kinesis. The preservation of mating pairs has important taphonomic implications for the Messel Pit Fossil Site, as it is unlikely that the turtles would mate in poisonous surface waters. Instead, the turtles initiated copulation in habitable surface waters, but perished when their skin absorbed poisons while sinking during into toxic layers. The mating pairs from Messel are therefore more consistent with a stratified, volcanic maar lake with inhabitable surface waters and a deadly abyss.
Caught in the act: the first record of copulating fossil vertebrates | royalsocietypublishing.org (http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/06/15/rsbl.2012.0361)
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They were found as male-female pairs. In two cases, the males even had their tails tucked under their partners' as would be expected from the coital position.
Details are carried in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Researchers think the turtles had initiated sex in the surface waters of the lake that once existed on the site, and were then overcome as they sank through deeper layers made toxic by the release of volcanic gases.
The animals, still in embrace, were then buried in the lakebed sediments and locked away in geological time.
"We see this in some volcanic lakes in East African today," explained Dr Walter Joyce of the University of Tübingen.
"Every few hundred years, these lakes can have a sudden outburst of carbon dioxide, like the opening of a champagne bottle, and it will poison everything around them."
Nine pairs of turtles have been unearthed at the site over the past 30 years.
In most of the couples, the individuals were discovered in contact with each other. For the pairs that were not, the individuals were no more than 30cm apart.
Turtles fossilised in sex embrace | bbc.co.uk (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18495102)
Coprolites - Fossilised Dinosaur Dung
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Coprolites Fossil Dung
Coprolites are fossiled dung, Fossil Faeces and as one of the jokes goes - Coprolite Happens! But how did it happen? How can so much Dinosaur and other dung get fossilised and mostly inside the animals?
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Coprolite Happens
One explanation that would fit reality is if Coprolites were fossilised instantly along with the rest of the animal.
The info below is taken from The Discovery of Coprolites (Fossil Dung) in the 19th Century | suite101.com (http://suite101.com/article/the-discovery-of-coprolites-fossil-dung-in-the-19th-century-a376159)
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trace fossils - kopros lithos - ichnofossils (Coprolites)
English Cleric and Geologist William Buckland First Described These Trace Fossils in 1829
Fossils may be divided into two basic types, body fossils and trace fossils. Body fossils represent remains that were once actual organic body parts of a creature, such as bones and teeth. Trace fossils, on the other hand, also known as ichnofossils (from the Greek word “ikhnos”, meaning "track" or "trace"), represent evidence of an organism’s activity. Examples include trackways, burrows and borings.
Another variety of trace fossil – coprolites – represents fossilized dung. They are typically contorted or nodular and can indicate features such as the parent creature’s diet. The true nature of coprolites weren’t realized until the late 1820s.
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Mary Anning’s Fossil Depot (Coprolites)
Mary Anning Discovers Supposed Bezoar Stones in English Fossil Deposits
Mary Anning was an English fossil collector who made several important paleontological discoveries, such as the first plesiosaur skeletons and first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton. Living from 1799 to 1847, she spent her life collecting and selling fossils (at her shop, Anning’s Fossil Depot) near her home in Lyme Regis, a coastal town in West Dorset, England. She is believed to be the inspiration for Terry Sullivan’s 1908 tongue twister, “She Sells Seashells." It reads as follows: "She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore. / The shells she sells are sea-shells, I'm sure. / For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore / Then I'm sure she sells sea-shore shells."
By the late 1820s, Anning had established herself as a noteworthy fossil collector and knowledgeable paleontologist. In her diggings at Lyme Regis, she found numerous stony, potato-shaped objects, typically ranging in size from two to four inches long and half as wide.
Locals called these objects “bezoar stones” because they resembled the gallstones common in bezoar goats, ancestors to the domestic goat. At one time, bezoar stones were believed to have important medicinal values as poison antidotes. At Lyme Regis, Anning often found them in the abdominal regions of ichthyosaur skeletons. Furthermore, upon breaking open many of them, she found that they often contained bone fragments from such creatures as ichthyosaurs and fish.
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William Buckland Fossil Faeces (Coprolites)
William Buckland Names and Describes Coprolites
By the 1920s, English minister and geologist William Buckland had established himself as a leading authority on paleontology. For instance, he was the first person to scientifically describe a dinosaur, introducing Megalosaurus in 1824.
Like Anning, Buckland had also found objects resembling bezoar stones in fossil deposits. He visited with Anning and the two compared their fossils. Based on the content of the coprolites, plus their common proximity to the abdominal regions of skeletons, Buckland realized the true nature of the objects.
At a February 6, 1829 meeting of the Geological Society of London, Buckland described them and introduced the term coprolites (from the Greek words “kopros”, meaning "dung," and “lithos”, meaning "stone"). He then went on to describe coprolites found at other fossil localities around England and in several cases attributed them to specific animal types.