23rd September 2006, 11:29 AM
That was a typo, I meant 10 foot :D Some were water bound, some were able to use their thorax or special holes on the carapace (called spiracles) to take in oxygen while moving around on land and because of the decreasing oxygen level on earth they litteraly shrank overtime in order to pace out the use of oxygen in their bodies. Some modern bugs have make-shift lungs though by way of a membrane over the spiracle. They can basically pump oxygen in. The water scorpions of early, EARLY life on earth ranged in sizes between 4 to 10 feet long and were land and sea based. Types of dragonflies around triassic (I think) had 4 foot wingspans and bodies that were even longer. Then you have the millipedes that were around 7 feet long and cockroaches about the size of a golden retriever..
In fact the larger insects of the ancient world are confusing the hell out of entemologists. What's strange is that alot of insect species retain evolutionary genes and use them at will, like the praying mantis that grows wings every 20,000 generations or so and then loses them again; a behavior tht's likely attributed to the local gene pool becoming shallow and reactivating genes to get the mantids to spread across wider regions and mate in to larger gene pools. But the idea of insects or arthropods in general being so in-tune to their genetic make-up that you have to wonder if a dragonfly could grow back to 4 foot wingspans within a few thousand generations, or 10 foot scorpions. Bad that's just plain scary.
A house cat, if enlarged would gain huge amounts of muscle just by walking around. It would look identicle to a bengal tiger. Kinda bulky but still a swift predator. Its appetite would be insane though as house cats have a higher metabolism than bengal tigers. Over and above that you'd get in to the prehistoric cats such as the sabers which were 3 times larger than a bengal I think, though they were very much built for supporting massive weight.
But back to insects did you ever see that discovery channel show about animals in the far off future and how they would evolve? There was a bug called a falconfly and was just awesome. It too had a 4 foot wingspan (in the show using weather models, it's predicted that millions of years from now there will be a surge of oxygen in the atmosphere akin to the prehistoric one, explaining the growth of insects)
In fact the larger insects of the ancient world are confusing the hell out of entemologists. What's strange is that alot of insect species retain evolutionary genes and use them at will, like the praying mantis that grows wings every 20,000 generations or so and then loses them again; a behavior tht's likely attributed to the local gene pool becoming shallow and reactivating genes to get the mantids to spread across wider regions and mate in to larger gene pools. But the idea of insects or arthropods in general being so in-tune to their genetic make-up that you have to wonder if a dragonfly could grow back to 4 foot wingspans within a few thousand generations, or 10 foot scorpions. Bad that's just plain scary.
A house cat, if enlarged would gain huge amounts of muscle just by walking around. It would look identicle to a bengal tiger. Kinda bulky but still a swift predator. Its appetite would be insane though as house cats have a higher metabolism than bengal tigers. Over and above that you'd get in to the prehistoric cats such as the sabers which were 3 times larger than a bengal I think, though they were very much built for supporting massive weight.
But back to insects did you ever see that discovery channel show about animals in the far off future and how they would evolve? There was a bug called a falconfly and was just awesome. It too had a 4 foot wingspan (in the show using weather models, it's predicted that millions of years from now there will be a surge of oxygen in the atmosphere akin to the prehistoric one, explaining the growth of insects)