99 mill year old daddy longlegs

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mortenoen
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99 mill year old daddy longlegs

Post by mortenoen »

I got this piece of Burmite (amber from Myanmar) very cheap, only $60. Probably because this inclusion was damged by the polishing process, and because the amber was dark and full of debris.

And even though this is not a good picture, I would like to share it, because I finally have found an amber inclusion where evolution is very visible. Just look at a picture of a modern tipuloidea. It's still very cool I think:)

Oh, and the date is correct. There is only one deposit in Myanmar of amber, and it's 99 million years old. Using a UV light on the piece it glows pale blue, while Baltic amber is more green. There are a couple of very solid dealers in the UK.

I used a LOMO 8x objective I got for $6. It was the right one for the job. Don't ask. I use only Nikon M Plan objectives on Baltic amber. Burmite is very, very difficult to photograph. Pentax K-01 and bellows. 80 images in Zerene Stacker.

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The limits of my language means the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein

mortenoen
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Post by mortenoen »

And here is an Isoptera or termite in Burmite. This one cost me $120. I only wanted a couple of Burmite pieces because they are so old. I'm going back to Baltic amber soon because of the lower price and much better optical properties. Termites have not changed much in 100 million years...

LOMO 3.5x objective, Pentax K-01, 120 images in the stack. Front and back exposure merged to 1 image in Photoshop.



Image
The limits of my language means the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein

Olympusman
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Daddy long legs

Post by Olympusman »

I don't think the first one is a Daddy Long Legs. A true Daddy Long Legs (Harvestman in the U.S.) has only one body section and does not have compound eyes or wings. That looks like some kind of fly.

Mike
Michael Reese Much FRMS EMS Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

Pau
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Re: Daddy long legs

Post by Pau »

Olympusman wrote:I don't think the first one is a Daddy Long Legs. A true Daddy Long Legs (Harvestman in the U.S.) has only one body section and does not have compound eyes or wings. That looks like some kind of fly.
Mortenoen writes about tipuloidea so he isn't thinking in harvestmen.
This is a frequent problem when using common names, even more when the region and language are different.
Linnæus (Linné) invented the modern scientific naming and taxonomy long ago to avoid this issue :D
Pau

mortenoen
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Post by mortenoen »

Thanks! And sorry for the confusion. I never get this straight :-) I got as close as Tipulomorpha Tipuloidea for ID. I am not good with the common names, even in my own language. I have bought 2 new books, "A Dipterist's Handbook", and "Dipterist Start Pack". I will get better!
The limits of my language means the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein

Grahame
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Post by Grahame »

Yes common name confusion.
We have 3 Daddy long leggs in NZ.
This is a Cranefly using common names.
Nice to see such an old one

Grahame
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Post by Grahame »

Tipulidae is the latin for the family
Weird didn't seem to be able to edit last post.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Grahame wrote:Weird didn't seem to be able to edit last post.
mortenoen's images are much larger than we recommend, which causes the page format to become very wide. Probably the Edit button got pushed off the right side of your screen.

When that happens, whatever is not visible (typically a lot of text in addition to the buttons) can be seen either by scrolling sideways or by using control-minus to make your browser shrink the page.

On my screen it takes four presses of control-minus to see the buttons, by which time the text is too small to be readable. Issues like this are why we have the recommended image size set fairly small.

--Rik

Grahame
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Post by Grahame »

Yes Rik you are correct :)
I didn't even think about scrolling right.
Duh

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

Fascinating! I will gladly put up with the super-wide format, as this is so interesting.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

mortenoen
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Post by mortenoen »

Thanks for input. I will post smaller in the future :)
The limits of my language means the limits of my world -Ludwig Wittgenstein

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