Its Raining spiders

[Hursticon]

That video seems a little over the top, though.

Hehe, cheers dude; yeah it might be a little over the top but it's from a documentary series that I loved from the mid 00s "BBC: Walking with Monsters" & I thought it might be interesting for people to learn that at one point in time there was a Spider the size of an Adult's head.
(That would be hunting cats if it were alive today... pity )

[Megatron]

Hehe, cheers dude; yeah it might be a little over the top but it's from a documentary series that I loved from the mid 00s "BBC: Walking with Monsters" & I thought it might be interesting for people to learn that at one point in time there was a Spider the size of an Adult's head.
(That would be hunting cats if it were alive today... pity )

From Wiki:

In the BBC documentary Walking with Monsters (2005), a Carboniferous period species of Mesothelae was shown as being as large as a human head and shown hunting reptiles the size of today's cats. In the series, it is depicted as living like tarantulas in burrows and either lying in wait for its prey or chasing it through the jungle.

In fact, no spider that large has ever been found; but, at the time the series began production, the sea scorpion Megarachne had been mistakenly interpreted as a spider. The correct classification was not made until Walking With Monsters was well into production, and the giant spider was left in and called "Mesothelae" instead of Megarachne. Megarachne servinei had up until this time been considered the largest known spider.

[Hursticon]

From Wiki:

In the BBC documentary Walking with Monsters (2005), a Carboniferous period species of Mesothelae was shown as being as large as a human head and shown hunting reptiles the size of today's cats. In the series, it is depicted as living like tarantulas in burrows and either lying in wait for its prey or chasing it through the jungle.

In fact, no spider that large has ever been found; but, at the time the series began production, the sea scorpion Megarachne had been mistakenly interpreted as a spider. The correct classification was not made until Walking With Monsters was well into production, and the giant spider was left in and called "Mesothelae" instead of Megarachne. Megarachne servinei had up until this time been considered the largest known spider.

Well, this is both saddening & disappointing - I feel like I've been lied to now.

Especially as finding evidence from the carboniferous period is extremely hard at best, not to mention we're talking about a species of animal that rarely if ever leave behind fossils that survive a million years let alone 300 million +.

I'll just have to suffice with these instead.

[Trent]

I'll just have to suffice with these instead.

They had one of those at Sydney aquarium last time I was there. Pretty impressive.

[Megatron]

Well, this is both saddening & disappointing - I feel like I've been lied to now.

Especially as finding evidence from the carboniferous period is extremely hard at best, not to mention we're talking about a species of animal that rarely if ever leave behind fossils that survive a million years let alone 300 million +.

I'll just have to suffice with these instead.

lol. That's not technically a spider...

Don't feel too bad, though. Keep in mind that there are a lot of missing pieces in the puzzle that is paleontology (and archaeology) with varying, and sometimes contradictory, schools of thought, where researchers are always trying to find explanations for missing links as best they can, and will supersede past theories with new ones all the time as new discoveries are made that don't fit in with the current accepted model. But you already knew this.

[Hursticon]

lol. That's not technically a spider...

True, but an Arthropod it is so maybe... a very distant cousin?

Don't feel too bad, though. Keep in mind that there are a lot of missing pieces in the puzzle that is paleontology (and archaeology) with varying, and sometimes contradictory, schools of thought, where researchers are always trying to find explanations for missing links as best they can, and will supersede past theories with new ones all the time as new discoveries are made that don't fit in with the current accepted model. But you already knew this.