Herman by Jim Unger for September 02, 2023

And you should have seen those caterpillars!

Some of those caterpillars became petrified and turned into just plain pillars.

BIG caterpillars….

I’m in Florida, caterpillars and fireflies know enough not to come here. I should have paid attention

I wouldn’t want to come across those caterpillars. Nope.

Yeah, Caterpillar TRACTORS!

“Two million years ago”?

Haven’t they been extinct for more like 65 million years?!

And look what that did for him

B-I-G caterpillars.

Could I have one to put in amongst my cabbages?

Yes but they were the caterpillars that would become butterflies the size of Mothra from the Godzilla movies.

Yes. The tractors.

Gave me butterflies in my stomach.

“My what big teeth you have Grandma!”

Insects breathe through their exoskeletons. This is not a very efficient means of respiration. So their size is limited by the amount of oxygen in the air. Currently oxygen makes up about 21% of the atmosphere. Hundreds of millions of years ago, it was about 35%. Bugs could grow bigger.

There are fossils of 10-foot long centipedes, dragonflies the size of geese and you don’t even want to know how big cockroaches were in those days.

Just how big were them there caterpillars???

It reminds me of the one where the security guard tells them " this dinosaur is 400 million and 17 years old." They ask him how he can know so accurately, and he says, " Cuz’ it was 400 million years old when I started working here."

How can the archeologists be so sure about that? Maybe it ate things that ate caterpillars.

Yes, if “caterpillars” is actually a euphemism for anything that couldn’t out run him.

Cattlepilars

The caterpillars got the last laugh, they survived.

It was afraid of the “Butterfly effect”?

Those things are pretty soft – no wonder he still has all his teeth.

Those had to be honkin’ big caterpillars!

They had a taste for construction equipment?

I’ve seen Mothra.