Its Raining spiders

[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.

[Bidoofdude]

That picture made me throw Foc Soundwave at the wall!!!

[Hursticon]

That picture made me throw Foc Soundwave at the wall!!!

LOL, why would you throw FoC Soundwave at a wall?
(The mental image of you seeing it & immediately and instinctively throwing something is hilarious to me )

[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.

[liegeprime]

Meh. Tell me when it starts raining men, about half-past ten, hallelujah!

Somehow if this happened there'd be a lot of dead men.... imagine falling from that height waaay up from the clouds down on solid concrete streets and highways, brick rooftops nad even just plain old grassland ground. OUCH!! Lucky if they fall in rivers, they'd still have a chance but yeah, it's a massacre oh my goodness, blood everywhere, guts , bones splaterred across everywhere....

Hehe, then I'd love to know what people think of these:

Snip

I can bear small spiders but big ones like that just sends a chill up my spine, I don't even wanna attempt getting anything to splatter it. I prefer my spiders and other bugs for that matter, smaller and encased in amber or similar acrylic plastic resin casing. Having said that my old PC Mouse is a freebie from those Bugs magazine and it has a spider preserved/encased in Plastic clear acrylic which serves as the body of the mouse (the part where you hold to the mouse) So yeah I can bear with spiders but not like that big ones and alive...

[Kazza]

Oh man why did i come back to this thread and look at page 2 with the images, thanks guys, gonna have nightmares. Speaking off i have been having reoccuring nightmares of spiders crawling around me for a solid 5 yrs.

Reason i fear them was back when i was a kid, about 6-7 years old, in the backyard of our house, mum and i were admiring the stars. And i thought mum put her hand on my head to pat me. I turn to look at her and i notice both her arms and hands were kept to her sides. But i remember mums gaze and opened mouth staring at me in shock. Than i feel it moving on my head like fingers tapping individually. Mum screamed, I screamed, she brushed it off my head extremely quick and i saw it on the ground, a huntsman about the size of an adults hand (but than again everything looks big when your a kid). Anyways i remember mum stomping furiously as i clinged onto her from behind crying in fear.

[5FDP]

[ILikeSoundwave]

Haha so funny!