Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology => Topic started by: RRR on 13/12/2006 13:24:17

Title: Were there giant insects during the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago?
Post by: RRR on 13/12/2006 13:24:17
During the Carboniferous age 300 millions years ago instead of birds  there were  a lot of giant insects,  and a lot of swamps and rain forests ...
What was the biggest type of insects of the time?
What was a basic food for  the giant insects?
Were there  any inseƱts of prey?
Were there any giant flyes, giant spiders, giant ants,
and giant bees?



Title: Re: Were there giant insects during the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago?
Post by: JimBob on 14/12/2006 02:20:54
Insects ruled and were huge compared to today, there were all types, including carniverous ones. As for the biggest - beats me. There are spiders the size of dinner plates alive today. As in the Ice Age question below, see

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=carboniferous+fauna&btnG=Search

and look at the pages cataloged.
Title: Re: Were there giant insects during the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago?
Post by: RRR on 15/12/2006 11:22:25
Jim Bob.
Thank you. I did use  internet -programs like the  Google  for a search  ...
Basic information about the Carboniferous age and about other geological ages I did read...
But the basic problem  is :
1) It is difficult to find in internet any detailed geographical maps for  ancient geological ages (with lines of  ancient rivers, mountains, caves, lakes etc with  lines of geografical latitudes, longitudes  etc)....I need a help...Write , please, any link to any groups of maps with a  scale on 1:10 000 000 .(100 kilometers in  1 santimeter)  for the Carboniferous age of  the 300th million year BC, for  all areas of all  continents and islands  of the  time..
2) Modern fauna and flora  are divided into areas (Neotropical area , Paleotropical area, Australian area etc)
What was  the area's  division of global flora anf fauna for the Carboniferous age?

3) About gigantic insects like centipede "Arthropleura" (a length of 1.8 m) and gigantic arthropleurids of the Carboniferous age.. What was a basic food for  the Arthropleura and for the arthropleurids? About the gigantic rhizodont fish (a length of 7 meters)..What was an areal of  the kind of the fish during the Carboniferous ages?
Title: Re: Were there giant insects during the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago?
Post by: JimBob on 20/12/2006 01:54:51
RRR,

It takes time to familiarize yourself with a subject well enough to know how to phrase the searches. I will do what I can but cannot guarantee anything. For maps, NO maps will be as detailed as you wish. Some of the best maps of diferent times in geologic history can be found at http://www.dinodata.org/. Your will need to turn on cookies on your browser and register to acces the Paleogeologic Maps or "Earth History Maps of Jan Golonka"

I cannot tell you anything about the individual animals. I am not a paleontologist. That information you will need to find for yourself. I do not know that type of information.

Hope this helps and sorry I didn't check your message until today.
Title: Re: Were there giant insects during the Carboniferous age 300 million years ago?
Post by: daveshorts on 22/12/2006 11:33:35
I think you are unlikely to find maps of the scale you are wanting anway, simply because we know roughly where the continents were 3-400 million years ago, but we have a very limited idea of what the coastlines or rivers were doing, apart from in local areas if there is oil involved, and someone has spent a lot of money on geological surveys and drilling.