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A daily article on global humanities and geography
Bureau of Earth Knowledge – The Great Worm of the Carboniferous Period
No.701 - Carboniferous large bug
Author: Jiang's Little Thief Dragon
Proofreader: Cat Stu / Editor: Cotton
What comes to mind when you think of bugs (arthropods including insects)? Is there something very small that crawls around with slender, knotted legs and flies around?
It's even a little cute
Although today's bugs are annoying, they are small after all, and the fear caused to people is within the controllable range. What would it look like if these bugs were magnified tens or even hundreds of times?
Movie "Spider" poster, this kind of big bug movie is really a lot
You must have thought I was talking about something that only happens in science fiction, but this is something that really happened on prehistoric Earth, a time when giant insects invaded Earth, and that era was called the Carboniferous Period.
The Carboniferous period was a good time
What is the Carboniferous Period? What does it have to do with what we often call jurassic and Cretaceous?
The Carboniferous period was actually the fifth epoch of the Paleozoic, preceded by the Devonian and then by the Permian. In terms of time, the Carboniferous Period began 355 million years ago and ended 295 million years ago, which is really a very distant era. If you spread out the Carboniferous map, you will certainly not recognize where Asia is, where Europe is, and where is North America.
Most of the land is in the southern hemisphere
North and South China are also two giant islands floating in the open ocean...
A major event occurred in the history of the evolution of life in the Carboniferous Period, that is, the occupation of land by plants. At that time, the plants spread out like green carpets on the yellow earth, and the lush Carboniferous rainforest became the warm and humid nest of insects. Under such good living conditions, giant bugs also appeared.
Carboniferous rainforests
Before introducing the Carboniferous giant insects, it is a good idea to take a look at the big bugs on Earth today: the giant centipede (scolopendra galapagoensis) that lives in the Galapachus Islands can reach up to 30 cm in length; the Amazon giant bird-eating spider (theraphosa blondi) living in South America with legs up to 28 cm long; and the barrier reef giant sandfly (deinacrida) living in New Zealand Heteracantha) is more than 10 cm long; the attacus atlas, which lives in eastern and southeastern Asia, has a wingspan of up to 20 cm.
Yes from left to right
Giant centipede, giant bird-eating spider
Giant sand ant, large silkworm moth
These bugs are indeed not small, but they are too small compared to the Carboniferous giant insects that will appear below.
A spider as big as a human head
The giant spider in the movie The Hobbit who fights Bilbo
The first Carboniferous giant to appear was the Midridge, a spider that is about the size of the Amazon giant bird-eating spider mentioned above, but with a unique hunting style. Instead of making a net in the tree, the spider digs a pit in the ground, spits out spider silk and lays a net on the ground around the cave, and then hides in the hole to wait for the rabbit.
A mid-terrestrial spider that sets traps around the cave
When an animal passes by, it will touch the cobweb, and the vibration of the cobweb will spread to the hole. Based on the vibration of the web, the midtrus spider can judge the distance and direction of the prey, then rush out of the hole and bite the prey with its large teeth. Unlike today's spiders, the midtrusion spiders did not have venom, so being killed by them was certainly a slow and painful process.
Mesopods that are preying on reptiles
Although the size of the spider did not reach the level of anti-heaven, even smaller than many people expected, in the Carboniferous Period, when there were no large animals, it was already a powerful guy.
Mesopods that still survive today
A scorpion as big as a puppy
If you think the Middle Spider is nothing more than that, then the second Carboniferous giant insect that appears should be able to open your eyes, which is the pulmonoscorpius scorpion.
The three giants of prehistory are definitely indispensable to the giant scorpion warriors
The shape of scorpions is certainly no stranger to you, their bodies are wrapped in a hard shell, and there are six feet under the body, and they move majestically. Their weapons are also quite lethal, divided into two parts, one front and one back, the front weapon is a claw-like claw, and the rear weapon is a stinger at the end of the tail.
The rainforest scorpion that lives on Earth today
The Pomono scorpion was similar in appearance to today's scorpions, but much larger, reaching a length of 70 centimeters, as large as a puppy. When the Pomono scorpion hunts, it will clamp the prey with a claw-like claw, and the stinger at the end of the tail will stab the prey, injecting venom into the body of the prey.
When the prey eventually dies of poisoning, the Pomono scorpion will tear the prey to pieces and eat it little by little.
Restoration of the Pomono scorpion
The huge and poisonous Pumono scorpion is much more powerful than the Middle Dragon Spider, they are the terrifying killers in the Carboniferous rainforest, and now humans will definitely die when they encounter them!
The Pumono scorpion compares to the size of humans
Doesn't this suddenly pierce the brain?
There is no maximum, only bigger
You'd also like to see the more powerful and bizarre bugs, the famous Arthropleura of the Carboniferous Period, which should satisfy you. It is famous for its huge size, with a length of more than 2.6 meters and a width of 0.5 meters. Many people mistakenly think that it is a super large centipede living in prehistory at first sight, but in fact, the knotted chest is closer to Malu in classification.
A "centipede" as long as a car
The body structure of the knot, as its name suggests, is segmented, consisting of a total of 30 knots, each with a foot on either side, all of which add up to a total of 60. The hundred-footed worm is dead but not stiff, and can also be used to describe it.
The body of the knuckle chest is section by section
In addition to the feet, each section of the thorax body is covered with dorsal carapace, and the dorsal carapace extends to the left and right sides, protecting the feet. It is precisely because of the long and widened back armor that the knuckles look much wider and stronger than the centipede, as if the centipede had put on the widened armor.
A knotted chest with 60 feet on the ground
The 2.6-meter-long thorax is the largest terrestrial arthropod that has ever appeared on Earth, and it is not an exaggeration to call it the largest insect on land. The knuckle chest looks bulky, but it is actually agile, who let it have 60 feet! Paleontologists have found fossil footprints of the thorax, proving that the thorax can move quickly against the ground.
BBC "Walking with Monsters" stills
The thorax meets an amphibian
At the beginning of the discovery of this biological fossil, some people thought that since it was related to the centipede, it was naturally a terrible killer. It must have a pair of centipede-like hooks on its head that secrete venom. With the size of the chest, if it bites, it can kill an adult in minutes. Imagine a knotted chest as long as a small car quietly crawling on the leafy ground of the Carboniferous rainforest, and then launching a sudden and fatal blow to the prey with a poisonous hook, which is simply the Carboniferous Voldemort!
The poisonous knotted chest that attacks humans in the British drama "Prehistoric Invasion"
But as research progressed, paleontologists came up with very different perspectives. They believe that the thorax is docile vegetarian, because the detritus of the plant are found in the stomach of the thorax. In addition, paleontologists have not found fossil mouthparts for predation. Perhaps the thorax is not a professional killer, but an omnivore who does not refuse to come, and their back armor is used to defend against more fearsome predators.
Fossils of the thorax of the knots, partially segmented dorsal carapaces can be seen
But regardless of whether it eats meat or vegetarian, it is the first giant insect of the Carboniferous Period.
Although the chest is fierce, after all, it can only dominate the land, and it can only look at the sky and sigh. At that time, the overlord of the earth's sky was another giant flying insect, meganeura monyi.
It looks like a dragonfly, but its wingspan reaches 65 centimeters, which is as big as a magpie. It is the largest flying arthropod ever built. When the fossil of the giant vein was discovered in 1880, the reticular wing veins of its wings were clearly preserved, resembling the veins of a leaf, hence the name.
Giant veins in contrast to human body size
The giant vein resembles an enlarged dragonfly with three single eyes and two compound eyes on its big head, as if it were wearing a flying helmet. Giant vein eyes are not only used to play handsome, its compound eyes have 30,000 small eyes, can scan the surrounding environment, timely detection and locking prey. Underneath the head of the giant veins are chewing mouthparts, so it is better to say that they are biting food than that they are nibbling on food.
The giant vein has two pairs of narrow wings on its back, with a network of wing veins on the wings. Like today's dragonflies, giant veins have excellent flight capabilities, capable of not only flying forward, but also hovering and flying backwards. When the four wings of the giant vein flapped, it would make a humming sound, and when the Carboniferous heard this sound, it meant that the danger was close.
This big guy is a full-fledged carnivore. Its diet includes not only other bugs, but also fish, amphibians and reptiles that have just emerged. After locking on to the prey, the giant vein will swoop down and then grab the prey with its long barbed limbs, just like today's eagles. The Insects of the Carboniferous Period ruled not only the land, but also the sky.
The giant vein that bites the prey
Why carboniferous
Having seen so many giant bugs, you will surely ask: Why were there so many giant bugs in the Carboniferous Period alone?
The reason is precisely the big thing mentioned earlier – the occupation of land by plants. The sudden appearance of vast rainforests produced vast amounts of oxygen, causing the Earth's atmosphere during the Carboniferous period to soar to an unprecedented 35 percent — only 21 percent of oxygen in the atmosphere today.
The highest point of the Earth's atmospheric and oceanographic volume over a period of 600 million years is the Carboniferous Period
Arthropods, including insects, have been the biggest beneficiaries of high-concentration oxygen environments. Arthropods breathe by stomata on the surface of the body and the trachea that are spread throughout the body, and belong to the external respiratory system. The larger their body, the smaller the ratio of surface area to volume, and they cannot support the oxygen needed for metabolism in the body. Only when the oxygen content of the atmosphere increases, insects have the opportunity to become larger. The Carboniferous period met this requirement.
By the end of the Carboniferous period, global temperatures began to drop, the climate changed from warm and humid to dry, and the Once Invisible Carboniferous rainforest gradually disappeared, which is the "Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse". The disappearance of the rainforest led to a decline in atmospheric oxygen content, and the giant insects that once ran rampant disappeared due to lack of oxygen, and the era of insect domination of the earth ended.
Fossils preserved from Carboniferous rainforests
Despite the collapse of the rainforest and the disappearance of giant insects, a group of newborn animals quietly emerged in the late Carboniferous revolution, the earliest reptiles, these humble little creatures are the common ancestors of today's reptiles, birds and mammals.
The forest lizard is a primitive reptile that lived in the Carboniferous period
Finally, some trivia from the Carboniferous Period: the Carboniferous Period was only 22.4 hours a day, and it was very windy.
The maximum temperature of the Carboniferous Period was only 20 ° C, which can be said to be very cool.
Some gif diagrams:
The giant spider from the movie The Hobbit 2
The insect ditch in the movie "King Kong"
end