Horshoe Crabs, Sow Bugs,Trilobites and Time

[avad]

Took an early evening walk on the magic bay with Brent...the air was chilly and we went about looking at stones and shells and such wonders.

these horshoe crab guys have always fascinated me. "They evolved in the shallow seas of the Paleozoic Era (540-248 million years ago(!!?) with other primitive arthropods like the trilobites. Horseshoe crabs are one of the oldest classes of marine arthropods, and are often referred to as 'living fossils', as they have not changed much in the last 350 to 400 million years." um..that's a long time. and here we both are.(?)

Walks on the bay always get me to thinking about time...this itty bitty moment I'm standing in and all it took to get here and all it took for these stones and other things to become what I'm looking at. Quite mind-boggling really.

Earlier at home I was playing with a little sow bug (or pill bug or woodlouse, whatever you may call it)...Also thinking about its resemblance to trilobites and other strange wonders of time...

Wonder where we are headed...this lil human species...with our endoskeleton that makes us so fleshy and fragile on the outside..so we make carapace-cars and houses out of metal and wood...and our big funny brains that help us to understand things about longevity and sustainability that we are hopefully trying to incorporate into our behaviors.....

Comments

[fragiletender.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm so envious that you saw a horseshoe crab, those guys are amazing.

Woodlice are called 'slaters' in the part of Scotland that I'm from, they seem to have different local names all over Britain. I often see them late at night when I go out to post my Diary Project envelopes. I find them very endearing, possibly because I was so obsessed with fossils as a child.

[rokkitz.livejournal.com]

great photo. i find myself coming back again and again to look at. such a weird thing to think that it is not a stone, it is (or was) a living creature, leaving behind stones that make us wonder if stones can become living. what really is the difference between you and it?

"What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?" - Gregory Bateson