Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1885 — The Oldest Land Animal. [ARTICLE]

The Oldest Land Animal.

The oldest known land animal is a scorpion recently found by Prof. G. Lindstrom, in the uppermost layer of the Silurian rocks of Gothland, Sweden. The fossil scorpion has, like existing ones, seven segments in the tail, the last shaped into a sting, and seven abdominal segments. There are eight legs, and both the great claws, or palpi, still remain. The legs differ from those of existing scorpions in ending in a point instead of in claws. The air breathing nature of the animal is made evident by the preservation of a stigma, or breathing-hole, on the right side. It will be remembered that all Silurian animals hitherto discovered have been fishes, Crustacea, molluscs, crabs, sponges, etc. —all of them aquatic animals, yet geologists have always supposed that land, and probably land animals, must have existed in silurian ages. The sea, the estuary and the lake embalm their dead in sediment, but the land fails to do this, and hence the absence of fossil examples of land animals in any formation does not prove the non-existence of such animals. Fat people have their choice of four systems for reducing their weight: First, eating nothing containing starch or fat; second, avoiding all food containing sugar or starch; third, being clothed in wool and sleeping in flannel blankets; and fourth, never eat and drink at the same time.