If these things get out we're dead...

smash

Enormous Paleozoic flesh-eaters created in lab

Crazed boffins in the USA say they have successfully carried out a Jurassic Park-style project in which enormous flesh-eating creatures from the remote prehistoric past have been successfully bred in the laboratory. Incomprehensibly this laboratory is not located on a remote island.

As many readers will doubtless be aware, during the late Paleozoic era the Earth was, if not exactly ruled or terrorised, at the least very seriously bothered by swarms of gigantic dragonflies with wingspans around 70cm across. The monster insects will have been all the more troublesome as dragonflies "need to hunt live prey", according to experts.

One such expert is Dr John VandenBrooks, who has after a lengthy struggle managed to breed such much-enlarged dragonflies in his Arizona laboratory. The large size was achieved by enhancing atmospheric oxygen levels to 31 per cent, as seen in the Paleozoic (today's air is only about 20 per cent O2).

The hard bit, according to the prof, was not the creation of this artificially enriched (or "hyperoxic") atmosphere but the actual care and feeding of the monstrous, prehistoric winged flesh-eaters.

"Dragonflies are notoriously difficult to rear," boasts VandenBrooks. "We are one of the only groups to successfully rear them to adulthood under laboratory conditions."

According to a statement issued by the Geological Society of America:

There is no such thing as dragonfly chow. As juveniles they need to hunt live prey and in fact undergraduate students Elyse Muñoz and Michael Weed working with Dr VandenBrooks had to resort to hand feeding the dragonflies.
It's to be hoped that the unfortunate undergrads escaped from the hyperoxia chambers with their hands and other body parts intact. Plenty more where they came from, no doubt.

Not content with his creation of huge flesh-eating Paleozoic hyper-dragonflies, VandenBrooks also sought to breed greatly enlarged cockroaches and other horrors using similar hypercharged breeding pens. However this time the experiments were a failure, even once the hyper-roaches had been blasted with incredibly powerful energy rays at a handy atom-smasher.

The disappointed prof, perhaps assisted by surviving members of his team, is to reveal details of his accomplishments at a convention in Colorado later today. ®

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/01/paleozoic_park/

Cantona's Collars

Me want's one:D:D

Tomebagel

Wanna see a picture of one:(

jimthemental

Dear oh dear, Alison stop.

Panda

i call bull****, pics or gtfo....

Galvasean

Tomebagel wrote: »

Wanna see a picture of one:(

stimpson

Panda wrote: »

i call bull****, pics or gtfo....

I for one welcome our Paleozoic flesh-eating overlords.

H.O.T.A.S.

Now I gotta go look for my Tennis Racket :mad:

epgc3fyqirnbsx

Dragonflies are your friend, they eat midges and mosquitos.
I can only assume these lads will eat pigeons, not a bad thing

seamus

Awesome.

Thankfully they will suffocate and die outside the lab. Unless they bite one of the lab researchers, slowly turning him into a human-dragonfly hybrid with a 2m wingspan.

Galvasean

seamus wrote: »

Thankfully they will suffocate and die outside the lab. Unless they bite one of the lab researchers, slowly turning him into a human-dragonfly hybrid with a 2m wingspan.

Capt'n Midnight

http://sify.com/news/dragonflies-grow-bigger-with-more-oxygen-study-news-international-kk5nOieajhb.html

To understand how paleo-oxygen levels would have influenced the evolution of insects, scientists decided to look at the plasticity of modern insects raised in different oxygen concentrations.

The team raised cockroaches, dragonflies, grasshoppers, meal worms, beetles and other insects in atmospheres containing different amounts of oxygen to see if there were any effects.

One result was that dragonflies grew faster into bigger adults in hyperoxia.

However, cockroaches grew slower and did not become larger adults. In all, ten out of twelve kinds of insects studied decreased in size in lower oxygen atmospheres.

But there were varied responses when they were placed into an enriched oxygen atmosphere.

"The dragonflies were the most challenging of the insects to raise," said John VandenBrooks of Arizona State University.

One possibility is that the hyperoxic reared roaches stayed in their larval stage longer, perhaps waiting for their environment to change to a lower, maybe less stressful oxygen level.

VandenBrooks and team took the hyperoxic-reared roaches to Argonne National Lab's x-ray synchrontron imaging facility to get a closer look at the tracheal tubes.

They found that the tracheal tubes of hyperoxic-reared roaches were smaller than those in lower oxygen atmospheres.

That decrease in tube size with no increase in the overall body size would allow the roaches to possibly invest more in tissues used for other vital functions other than breathing - like eating or reproducing.

The roaches reared in hypoxia (lower oxygen) would have to trade off their investment in these other tissues in order to breathe.

they didn't try millipedes

Galvasean

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://sify.com/news/dragonflies-grow-bigger-with-more-oxygen-study-news-international-kk5nOieajhb.html

they didn't try millipedes

Pity.

Mits

I wonder could you use the dragonfly for fishing??

MarkR

I don't quite get what happened here. Did he get some fossilized dna and implant it or something? How can you breed things that aren't around now?

I can see it now. Puts on some Barry White. Lowers the lights. Rubs fossils together. Result.

Shenanigans!

Capt'n Midnight

Modern insects put in conditions that existed back then,

the poor things would be gasping for breath if they got loose


would be interesting if they tried the same thing with chickens, they are much closer to dinosaurs

StupidLikeAFox

steve06 wrote: »

Crazed boffins...

Stopped reading here....

Jumpy

Erm

Updated to Add

Dr VandenBrooks writes in to say:

The dragonflies that we reared in the lab did not have 70 cm wingspans, that is how big they were 300 million years ago. Our dragonflies were only 15% larger than normal, hardly enormous, huge or much-enlarged. Just thought I would inform you of what the results actually were.

Galvasean

ColHol wrote: »

Stopped reading here....

I too hate the word boffins.

A-Trak

Arely Thousands Garbage wrote: »

I can only assume these lads will eat pigeons, not a bad thing

But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by Dragonflies............

SKINNER No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the Dragonflies.

LISA But aren't the snakes even worse?

SKINNER Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

LISA But then we're stuck with gorillas!

SKINNER No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

AnonoBoy

Oh those crazed boffins they're always up to something!

Yitzhak Rabin

Seems they're at least sticking to the tried and tested sensationalist science 'journalism'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1

Mc Love

Could imagine the front of your car and windscreen hitting those on the way up the M7??

krudler

Have none of the scientists watched The Mist?!

anyway they shouldnt be wasting their time on insects, make us some dinosaurs!