Arthropods as large as Shelob might have existed

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BrianIsSmilingAtYou
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Arthropods as large as Shelob might have existed

Post by BrianIsSmilingAtYou »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7104421.stm

The article is about a fossil scorpion 8ft long (2.5 m) that was recently discovered in Germany.
The species existed during a period in Earth history when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today.

And it was those elevated levels, some palaeo-scientists believe, that may have helped drive the super-sized bodies of many of the invertebrates that existed at that time - monster millipedes, huge cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies.
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If anyone has info on other possible real-life analogues to Tolkien's imaginary creatures, please let us know.

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Primula Baggins
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Post by Primula Baggins »

:shock:

I knew about the dragonflies with two-foot wingspans, b-b-b-b-but. . . .

:help:
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Frelga
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Post by Frelga »

Well, she did exist since the dawn of time. :shock: :shock: :shock:

And we all know that the fell beast is really a pterodactyl, right?
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

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Post by Primula Baggins »

That's what I always assumed, from what Tolkien himself wrote in LotR. All that about their lingering after their time, and "And he nourished them with fell meats" and such. I think of that line quite often when I'm cooking a huge holiday dinner.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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BrianIsSmilingAtYou
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Post by BrianIsSmilingAtYou »

Primula Baggins wrote:That's what I always assumed, from what Tolkien himself wrote in LotR. All that about their lingering after their time, and "And he nourished them with fell meats" and such. I think of that line quite often when I'm cooking a huge holiday dinner.
Fell meats are so *tasty*! :)

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Post by N.E. Brigand »

Frelga wrote:And we all know that the fell beast is really a pterodactyl, right?
Asked by Rhona Beare, "Did the Witch-king ride a pterodactyl at the siege of Gondor?" Tolkien responded, in Letter #211:
Pterodactyl. Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.
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Frelga
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Post by Frelga »

BrianIsSmilingAtYou wrote:Fell meats are so *tasty*! :)

BrianIs :) AtYou
My Thanksgiving menu is now complete. :spin:
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

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Primula Baggins
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Post by Primula Baggins »

Only consider: birds are dinosaurs. So a turkey is just like a fell beast, right? Ergo, fell meats.

(I never liked the movie convention of calling the winged Nazgûl mounts "fell beasts" all at once, as if a "fell beast" is a particular kind of beast, not a beast that is, well, fell. I think that shows a bit of misunderstanding of the text.)

(And then there are the orc-pants Sam put on, "made of some unclean beast-fell." [from memory] Perhaps that's what confused Philippa Boyens.)
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Anduril
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Post by Anduril »

Pterodactyl. Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a 'pterodactyl', and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.
"Semi-scientific mythology"? Was Tolkien a Creationist?
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Primula Baggins
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Post by Primula Baggins »

The arguments for evolution were less generally understood then, I think, even by educated people. A knowledge of basic science wasn't considered essential to being educated. So a man like Tolkien might sincerely believe that the Genesis account had just as much going for it and that evolution might indeed be "semi-scientific mythology."
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Post by solicitr »

No, Tolkien didn't take Genesis seriously as a factual account: see the Letter where he contrasts it to the Gospels (which he believed implicitly).

What's amusing is that many present-day paleontologists would refer to the theories of the 1950s as 'semi-scientific mythology!'

But I expect what Tolkien was referring to was not so much the scientific discipline as the intrusion of Dinosaurs into popular culture, from the Lost World to King Kong to Alley Oop.
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Primula Baggins
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Post by Primula Baggins »

I meant to imply that he didn't think either one was likely to be literally right. A fair number of intelligent people then, as now, dismissed science as a set of opinions no more likely to be correct than their own. Yet many of the same people found it hard to take the Bible literally.

But I think you may have the right of it.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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MithLuin
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Post by MithLuin »

I knew that the reason we couldn't have spiders that size was because the book lungs they use are too inefficient to keep something of that size going. So, it would require extra oxygen in the atmosphere to exist...I just didn't know it had! Well, a scorpian is close to a spider, anyway....



Or rather...I guess I should have known all this, if I'd been paying closer attention when it came up 3 years ago ;)

Speciating the Fauna of Middle Earth

In answer to Brian's question (If anyone has info on other possible real-life analogues to Tolkien's imaginary creatures, please let us know.) - more than you wanted to know!
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