A massive fossilized spider has set a new size record. It looks like today's golden orb-weavers, which are large enough to dine on small birds. This discovery, in conjunction with similar ones, presents problems for evolutionary origins, and also shows how a name choice can be misleading. What did scientists decide to name this fossil, and why?

"Scientists have struggled for decades to figure out how giant pterosaurs could become airborne and some recent proposals have simply assumed it must have been impossible," according to Michael Habib of Chatham University USA.¹ He recently co-authored a new study on pterosaur flight, the findings of which show that these giant reptiles not only could fly, but could do so skillfully.<

The blob lives. Or at least, it has been reconstructed in a three-dimensional computer model.

The life cycles of fig trees and fig wasps are so closely intertwined, they look like they were made for each other. If this is true, then their fossils would be quite similar to modern forms, showing no history of imagined evolutionary past. And recent research on a fig wasp fossil shows exactly that.

Conventional geology assumes that different rock layers represent different periods of time. Paleontologists assess the age of fossilized creatures by the rock layers in which they are found. So, a fossil found in a lower rock layer is considered to have lived in a much earlier time than one found in a higher ("younger") stratum.