MUSIC: Oakenfold. All filming done by me free handed with a hi 8mm camera.
(SPIDER) Th
MUSIC: Oakenfold. All filming done by me free handed with a hi 8mm camera.
(SPIDER) The spider species "Argiope aurantia" is commonly known as the Black and Yellow Garden Spider or Writing Spider. It is common to the lower 48 of the United States, southern Canada, Mexico, and Central America. They have distinctive yellow and black markings on their abdomens and a mostly white cephalothorax. Males range from 5 to 9 mm; females from 19 to 28 mm. Like other members of A.aurantia and almost all other spider species, they are considered harmless to humans. This female of the species is striking in appearance with distinct yellow and black markings, including banding on the legs. Despite the vivid color, the garden spider is well camouflaged, blending in easily with partially sunlit areas. The female of the species grows much larger than the male. Females have large rounded bodies that may grow to 40 mm (1 1/2 inches), excluding the legs. If the length of the legs is added, the female can reach 75 mm (3") in diameter. Males are thin-bodied and only 20 mm (¾") long. Aurantia has three claws on each foot, unlike spiders that have only two claws and do not spin orb-webs. The third claw helps them manage the strands of silk while they spin the complicated web. The young of the species resemble the adults, except for size and the development of reproductive organs. These spiders are not dangerous to people, and their bites result in nothing more than a sore, itchy swelling that goes away in a few days. The medical literature contains at least one report of a bite by A.aurantia (Gorham and Rheney 1968). Mild pain some distance from the site of the bite was suggestive of a neurotoxin.
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~plank/plank/pics/spider.html
(BUTTERFLIES) Palamedes Swallowtails "Papilio palamedes" The Palamedes Swallowtail is a large, dark swallowtail butterfly marked with yellow spots and bands. It is particularly common in and near swampy woods. Its eggs are pale yellow-green. Older larvae are green with a pale yellow lateral line edged beneath with a fine black line. The underside of the larva is pinkish-brown. Abdominal segments have a transverse band of six blue dots with each dot ringed by a fine black line (much thinner than those on larvae of the spicebush swallowtail, Papilio troilus). One dot on each side is beneath the lateral line. There are a pair of large tan false eyespots lined with black on the rear of the thorax. The eyespots have a large black center and a white "false reflection" above. Larvae also have a smaller pair of tan spots at the front of the abdomen. Pupae are green with a white lateral line edged above with a purple-brown line. Pupae have two short horns.
http://www.carolinanature.com/butterflies/palamedes.html
(GECKOS) The Leopard gecko "Eublepharis macularius" is a nocturnal ground-dwelling gecko found in the deserts of Pakistan, Western India, Afghanistan, and parts of Iran. Unlike most geckos it possesses eyelids. Leopard geckos have become well established in captivity, particularly the pet industry.
Info: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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An international team of scientists recently announced the discovery of a new species of b
An international team of scientists recently announced the discovery of a new species of blind deep-sea crab whose legs are covered with long, pale yellow hairs. This crab was first observed in March 2005 by marine biologists using the research submarine Alvin to explore hydrothermal vents along the Pacific-Antarctic ridge, south of Easter Island. Because of its hairy legs, this animal was nicknamed the "Yeti crab," after the fabled Yeti, the abominable snowman of the Himalayas. The Yeti crab was discovered during the Easter Microplate expedition to the southeast Pacific, led by MBARI scientist Bob Vrijenhoek. The primary goal of this expedition was to learn how bottom-dwelling animals from one deep-sea hydrothermal vent are able to colonize other hydrothermal vents hundreds or thousands of miles away. Vrijenhoek and his team were addressing this question by comparing the DNA of animals at hydrothermal vents in different parts of the Pacific Ocean.
During one Alvin dive, marine biologist Michel Segonzac, from Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer (IFREMER) in France, noticed an unusually large (15-cm-long) crab with hairy arms lurking on the seafloor. Segonzac asked the Alvin pilots to collect this crab and bring it back to the surface.
The researchers saw more of these unusual crabs during subsequent Alvin dives. Most of the crabs were living at depths of about 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) on recent lava flows and areas where warm water was seeping out of the sea floor. According MBARI biologist Joe Jones, "Many of the crabs were hiding underneath or behind rocks—all we could see were the tips of their arms sticking out."
After returning to shore, researchers Segonzac and Jones worked with Enrique Macpherson from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain to identify the crab they had collected. They found that the crab was not only a new species (which they named Kiwa hirsuta), but an entirely new family (Kiwaidae). The Yeti crab is a distant relative to the hermit crabs commonly seen lurking in tide pools.
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Unknown hammerhead salamanders are reported in cryptozoology from time to time. In 1992, a
Unknown hammerhead salamanders are reported in cryptozoology from time to time. In 1992, a Japanese artist made a small diplocaulus model which he photographed in a pan on a lawn. The photo looked quite realistic and was circulated in 2004 and 2005 on forums where many thought it was a real salamander. Diplocaulus lived from the late Carboniferous to the late Permian period (roughly 270 million years ago) I had seen the picture of it in the pan with water in a few diffrent videos and so I did some research and found out it was a fake picture and had been extinct for a long time. There are no other videos on youtube that explain this and that is why I made this video. The hammerhead salamander "Diplocaulus" is in fact extinct.
[Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
"Diplocaulus in popular culture"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplocaulus
Info on a study done in 1980.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/35462
When you get there it says "You are not currently authorized to access this article." Dont worry about that I accessed it just fine.
Two major subclasses of extinct amphibians are found in the fossil record. They are the Labyrinthodontia and the Lepospondyli. The amphibians of the Labyrinthodontia, which lived during the late Devonian through Triassic periods (345 to 190 million years ago), include the most primitive amphibians represented by the genus Ichthyostega. They were fresh-water carnivorous animals, with tail fins, small scales, and a fishlike vertebral column. Their skulls had many bones, as did those of their presumed crossopterygian ancestor. The Labyrinthodontia, according to the U.S. paleontologist Alfred S. Romer, include three extinct orders: the Ichthyostegalia, the Temnospondyli, and the Anthracosauria. The Anthracosauria are thought to be the ancestors of reptiles and hence of modern birds and mammals. The Temnospondyli are thought by some scientists to be the ancestors of the modern frogs.
The amphibians of the subclass Lepospondyli, which lived during the Mississippian through lower Permian periods (340 to 270 million years ago), include the extinct orders Nectridea, Aistopoda, and Microsauria. Members of the latter two orders were elongate. Some had limbs, some had reduced limbs, and some had no limbs. Many scientists suggest that the ancestors of modern salamanders and caecilians are among the lepospondyl.
(Lepospondyli Classification)
All Lepospondyls are most notably characterised by having simple, spool-shaped vertebra, which were not preformed as cartilage but rather grew as bony cylinders around the notochord. Usually also the upper portion of the vertebra, the neural arch, is fused to the centra (the main body of the vertebra) (Colbert 1969).
No clear common ancestors are known, since each of the known clades are already highly specialised when they first appear in the fossil record. It is not known whether the Lepospondyls are an artificial (polyphyletic) group which independently evolved similar characteristics of the vertebra, or whether they descended from a single common ancestor.
At one time it was thought that some Lepospondyls are related or perhaps ancestral to modern Urodela, although this view is no longer held. For a long time they were considered one of the three subclasses of amphibians (Romer 1966, Colbert 1969, Carroll 1988) More recently it has been suggested that the Lepospondyls may be related or ancestral to modern amphibians as well as to amniotes (reptiles etc) (Laurin 1996) , that they are an artificial grouping with some members related to both extinct and living amphibians (Batrachomorpha) but not amniotes (Benton 2000), or alternatively are a monophyletic group closely related to the ancestry of amniotes but not to recent amphibians (Benton 2004).
Apart from the Nectridea, Lepospondyls are limited in distribution to Europe and North America (Carroll 1988).
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