Alex and Samantha are off to school, Luke Michael is still sleeping and I'm here with my blog. Wasn't sure what to blog about so I went through my pictures and came up with my picture of a horseshoe crab. When I looked it up online it doesn't mention Florida as a place where they are found, but in April they mate in the river and quite often we find them on the beach when turtle season begins in May. Unlike their name suggests, they are not related to crabs. They are distant relatives to spiders, and one of the oldest classes of marine anthropods. Anthropod means having jointed feet. Horseshoe crabs are often refered to as living fossils since they have changed very little int he last 445 million years. In certain areas of the world they are actually on the endangered species list. They also have the ability to regrow lost limbs just as star fish do.
2 comments:
Really cool photo if the inverted crab. It looks like they have 10 legs, plus what look like claws.
What are the structures near the tail, that look sort of like nested shells or something?
Do you have nice close-up shots with the whole underside? I like the aspect of the living fossil. I remember reading that paleontologists had discovered fossils of birds remarkably like pelicans from millions of years ago.
Karl, thanks for asking that question because I realized after I posted the blog that I hadn't explained the second picture. That is actually a female and those are egg sacs. I don't have a picture of the complete underside. I think I was concentrating on getting a close up of the egg sacs. I actually have a couple of shells in the cupboard on my back porch so when I get a minute I will see if they still have all their legs and take another picture.
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