Pteam Palaeo PhD (& John)

The big event today was the St. Barbara's Day Geology Quiz. The most important part of a quiz team, as many of you know, is to come up with a good name (e.g. NMR). Our name was Pteam Palaeo PhD (& John) and consisted of yours truly, Graeme, Manabu, and a couple of other PhD students. I won't pretend that we finished at the top of the heap (too many geochemistry questions), but we did do well enough to at least place in front of most of the rest of the MSc cohort. Our crowning moment, without a doubt, was when Graeme correctly identified "zoochory" as the spread of seeds via animals, a question that no other team was able to answer. Of course, most importantly, a good time was had by all.
Also, to answer your question, Hans, the largest arthropod of all time was probably the sea scorpion Pterygotus, pictured above, which grew up to as much as nine feet long. The largest living arthropod, the Japanese spider crab, has a 12 foot leg span, but with a considerably smaller body. So there you go. I learned something from the quiz and you all learned something about giant "bugs." Everyone's a winner.