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Fossil oyster may contain golfball-sized pearl
Jenna Atkinson from the Blue Reef aquarium with the 145million year old oyster and (right) the MRI scan showing the pearl
The mollusc was given to an aquarium where experts used growth rings to determine how old it was, and were keen to discover if there was a rare gem inside.
The medical charity Cobalt, which provides state of the art scanning services, heard of the prehistoric find and volunteered to scan the oyster.
The scan showed a mysterious smooth object about the size of a golf ball inside the 145-million-year-old shell.
If it were removed and identified as a pearl, it could be worth many thousands of pounds.
But experts have decided not to explore the contents any further because the oyster would have to be destroyed.
The fossil, that is about 7ins across, remains at the Blue Reef Aquarium in Portsmouth, Hants, where it is kept securely and brought out for lectures and talks.
Lindsay Holloway, from the aquarium, said: "It was discovered in the nets of a fishing boat which was dredging here in the Solent.
"When the fishermen came back to port they thought it was real, but when they picked it up, cleaned it, and had a closer look they could tell it was a fossil.
"It had completely turned to stone.
"A member of the public called and informed us it was on display at a local fishmongers so we called them and they gave it to us to have in the aquarium.
"Oysters can be aged by annual growth rings on their shells and we have counted more than 200 rings on this oyster making it an extremely long-lived individual.
"It's obviously a million-to-one chance that it would contain anything but, if you were to go purely on the dimensions of the shell then you'd be looking at a golf ball-sized pearl."
Geoffrey Munn, the jewellery expert on the Antiques Roadshow and managing director of the famed London jeweller Wartski, was delighted with news of the find.
He said: "What a wonderful discovery. It sounds like there is every possibility that this is a pearl. I can't see why not.
"Pearls are not peculiar to oysters and can be found in conches and in our own fresh water mussels.
"Nowadays most pearls are found in far-flung places, but 145 million years ago it's quite possible that they grew nearer to home.
"To have a pearl the size of a golf ball would be exceptional, and the biggest that have been recorded are about half that size.
"However, if this shell were opened I think the beauty of the pearl would have gone."
La pirámide más antigua y grande de la tierra no es Egipcia ni Guatemalteca
Las pirámides más grandes y más antiguas de la Tierra se han encontrado en Bosnia. Datan de tiempos de la era de del hielo, aproximadamente hace 10000 años. Estas pirámides escondidas debajo de cerros plantean ser el hallazgo arqueológico más importante en lo que van del milenio y de momento todavía se están estudiando.
Las pirámides de Visoko
Un grupo de cinco colinas aparentemente artificiales llamaron la atención al arqueólogo Semir Osmanagic en el año 2005, quien comenzó a realizar excavaciones sobre las mismas para más tarde encontrar pasajes ocultos y resultados que señalarían que estos morros no son tan naturales como parecen.
Los cinco morros ubicados en Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, fueron nombrados como: la "Pirámide del Sol", la "Pirámide de la Luna", la "Pirámide del Dragón", la "Pirámide de la Tierra" y la "Pirámide del Amor".
La llamada "Pirámide del Sol" es la más alta de todas ellas que además se ha coronado como la más grande del mundo tras destronar a la Gran Pirámide de Egipto. Esta construcción recién descubierta tiene 220 metros de alto, mientras que la egipcia mide 147 metros y las de México 100 metros.
No solo su altura es impresionante, sino que estas pirámides regulares también tienen una antigüedad asombrosa. Los restos estudiados de los pasajes han demostrado que los sedimentos utilizados para la construcción de pisos y pasillos datan de hace más de 12000 años, más-menos 50 años.
Además de ser la pirámide más antigua y más grande que se haya encontrado hasta la fecha también es el mayor complejo de túneles subterráneos del mundo.
La construcción de esta pirámide sigue siendo un misterio gracias a su antigüedad, y más misterioso aún es que no se hayan encontrado restos orgánicos dentro de ella. A pesar de estos pocos datos se ha podido detectar que la construcción fue hecha a base de hormigón y cuenta con algunos sectores como escalinatas y pisos de bloques de piedra arenisca y azulejos.
La arenisca se encuentra cerca de la pirámide así que esta fue la razón de la elección de los constructores, esto es lo que opinan los expertos.
Científicos de todo el mundo se encuentran estudiando este increíble hallazgo ya que tanto su antigüedad tanto como su tamaño sorprenden hasta a el más incrédulo de los científicos.
De momento el Parque de las Pirámides de Bosnia cuenta con excavaciones en los 5 morros o pirámides, pero también cuenta con lugares donde aquellos que ven el lado más espiritual del asunto puedan ir a conectar sus energías.
A continuación voy a dejar una entrevista al arqueólogo, descubridor y encargado del hallazgo para que puedan entender su explicación sobre este gran misterio que a todos nos ha cautivado, incluso a mi que en el liceo me decían que la más alta era la de giza.
Diania cactiformis
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The fossil-rich Chengjiang deposits of Yunnan province, China, date from about 525 million years ago and are among lagerstätten that have preserved soft-bodied animals with amazing detail. Among the bizarre creatures inhabiting shallow Cambrian seas were the lobopodians, often described as legged worms. These are of evolutionary interest because of presumed, if enigmatic, relationships to velvet worms, water bears and arthropods. Both velvet worms and water bears have soft, segmented bodies and pairs of unstructured appendages – or lobopods – long seen as precursors to the segmented legs of arthropods.
An international team of Chinese and German scientists, led by Jiani Liu of Northwest University in Xi'an, has reported the discovery of a new genus and species of lobopodian that is the most arthropod-suggestive to date. Their description was based on three complete fossils and about 30 fragments. If their interpretations are correct, they suggest some controversial possibilities.
Their analysis of the new species, Diania cactiformis, places it close to the base of the arthropods and reinforces the notion that lobopodians are an artificial collection of early body plan experiments rather than a monophyletic lineage; that is, an evolutionary line that shares a unique common ancestral species.
Stated another way, their new species is claimed to be more closely related to arthropods than to other lobopodians.
D cactiformis does not immediately look like an animal to the untrained eye, contributing to its nickname: "walking cactus". The creature has robust and possibly hardened appendages that may possess articulated elements. Even more sensational is the suggestion that sclerotisation of limbs may have preceded that of the body on the march toward full-blown arthropod status.
The late palaeontologist and author Stephen Jay Gould talked about similarly improbable early body plans in his book about the Burgess Shale Formation, Wonderful Life. The foreign appearance of Dianiareminds me of Gould's take-home message: the contingency ofevolution. Had competition in the shallow Cambrian seas turned out differently, the living world today could well have looked completely different.
