Oldest Fossilized Shrimp: Geologists Study Rare Well-Preserved Creature Showing Muscles
A new fossil of a shrimp was recently found in Oklahoma. It was found by paleontologist Royal Mapes of Ohio University and his students. The shrimp is 360 million years old. It was found in the deep ocean. The reason why it is conserved so well is that in the deep oceans the currents are not so strong as on the surface. Therefor the fossil was conserved with the muscles. The shrimp belongs to a group of decapods. The decapods are animals that have ten legs. Lobsters, crabs and shrimps are decapods. The fossil found is the oldest in the world. There was another shrimp found in Madagascar, but it is 125 million years younger.
In my opinion this article was very interesting because I never heard about a fossil like this, I just knew about snail fossils and dinosaurs. From this article I learned a lot: I learned that not only snails and dinosaurs fossils exist but even shrimps. This article connects to the unit of this quarter and also connects to science and humanities. It connects to both because in humanities we are studying fossils and in science living things.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2010) — Rodney Feldmann, professor emeritus, and Carrie Schweitzer, associate professor, from Kent State University's Department of Geology report on the oldest fossil shrimp known to date in the world. The creature in stone is as much as 360 million years old and was found in Oklahoma. Even the muscles of the fossil are preserved.
Author: ScienceDaily
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101109172349.htm
Date: November 9, 2010
Due date: November 10, 2010
I thought that your article was very interesting, also! Your article made me wonder how scientists found a fossil in the deep ocean. It must have been a very complicated and hard process - you probably have to dive in a submarine, and then you have to use a machine to dig for fossils, because there is too much pressure deep down in the ocean for a human to be able to withstand, then, we would have to use the machine to show us the fossil...I think that it would probably be very, VERY, difficult. Even though they're hard to obtain, I bet that underwater fossils would be fascinating to study, and we would have SO MUCH more information about ancient animal life then we do now if we found more underwater fossils.
ReplyDelete