Crabby Appleton

It turns out that a lot of things from the old days - I mean the REALLY old days, like 100-million years ago - are preserved in natural amber, a fossilized tree resin that's been keep things in showcase condition since Neolithic days.

So, here's one that everyone in Maryland will love. There is a crab fossil in amber that old that is the true oldest crab ever discovered!

The story takes us to Tengchong, China, where two researchers were in a market and spotted a piece of amber jewelry that was discovered by miners in Myanmar (formerly Burma). There is a young crab embedded in the resin, not quite 1/4 inch long.

This is what they call a major scientific discovery; the crab answered a lot of questions about the crab family tree. 

And for his troubles, he has been given the name of the species Cretapsara athanata, which means "the immortal Cretaceous spirit of the clouds and waters," in Asian mythology. 

Before Cret (as he likes to be called) came along, all scientists knew that the crabs used to be strictly marine animals, before they started getting invited to cookouts and crab feasts. Science believed that the first crabs started prowling on land between 50 and 75 milion years ago. But the DNA testing on Cret  revealed that he made the jump more than 125 million years ago.

Scientists such as Javier Luque over at Harvard University, said the answers they got from this discovery told them a lot. 

"In a way, it's like finding a shrimp in amber," he says. "Talk about wrong place, wrong time."

These men and women have like the ultimate set of tools for looking at long-ago crabs, and with their micro-CT scans, they got pictures of tiny appendages like the crab's antennae, legs, the hairs on its mandible, compound eyes and even its gills, all there in the solidified tree sap.

I wish I had a camera that time in Ocean City when a crab used its claws to attach itself to my TopSider shoe. He did not want to give up his grip, and it wasn't until the radio played "Feelings" by Morris Albert that he disengaged and crabwalked off.

Luque wants to warn you that Cret is a true crab, not to be confused with hermit crabs or king crabs. Those "crabs" are not crabs at all, but, rather, crustaceans, relatives of the lobster and the shrimp and Mrs Paul's fish sticks.

 Now you won't have to worry about running out of things to talk about, next time you go out for a seafood dinner!