zoocreation


Whip Scorpions and
Whip Spiders



The Pedipalpi Before and After the Flood



Chad Arment (2024)





Thelyphonus sp., Thailand (CC BY-NC 2.0 Troup Dresser)



The vinegaroons, or whip scorpions, comprise a small order of arachnids (Uropygi, sometime given as Thelyphonida) consisting of a single family, the Thelyphonidae. Living genera are found in North and South America, Asia, and Africa. The largest reach a bit over three inches in length. They have large pincer-like pedipalps similar to those found in scorpions, but instead of a stinger, whip scorpions have a long whip-like flagellum as a tail that sprays a noxious chemical to dissuade predators and nosy humans.


Within the secular model, vinegaroons are closely allied to short-tailed whip scorpions (order Schizomida) and the strange-looking, but harmless, whip spiders (order Amblypygi). This grouping is generally termed the Pedipalpi (Clouse et al. 2017), as they all use heavy, spiny pedipalps in prey capture. All feed on small invertebrates. An additional commonality among the Pedipalpi is the use of the first pair of elongated legs as sensory organs rather than for walking. There is another arachnid from Carboniferous deposits in the United Kingdom, Plesiosiro, solely making up the extinct order Haptopoda, which is suggested to be a basal member of the Pedipalpi clade (Petrunkevitch 1949).


All three living orders are known from Cretaceous or earlier deposits, so all three orders survived the Flood independently. For creationists, there are (at least) two possible ways to consider the relationships among the Pedipalpi. First, it is possible that multiple baraminic lineages (at least one, possibly more, per order) independently survived since Creation, with no common ancestry. Second, it is possible that the Pedipalpi are a single baraminic lineage that diversified extensively between Creation and the Flood, with various intrabaraminic lineages independently surviving the Flood outside the Ark. Without knowing the size and diversity of the starting baraminic lineage (as there is no Biblical reason to assume a single initial pair), any discussion on that would simply be speculation.


As we learn more about diversification among the different baraminic lineages, it seems clear that the idea that the Created Kind is bounded at the family level, is outdated. The post-Flood diversification from the Ark pairs may be fully represented by a family in some cases, but there are plenty of examples of multi-familial diversification. The Ark pairs may have been genetically related to a more diverse grouping before the Flood that would not fit nicely within a single post-Flood family. Organisms surviving the Flood outside the Ark did not necessarily experience the same bottleneck, so extremely divergent survivors within those (possibly much more expansive) baraminic lineages is very possible.





Tohono vinegaroon, Mastigoproctus tohono, Cochise Co., AZ (CC BY 4.0 Matt Muir)



Plesiosiro

Carboniferous, United Kingdom

(Petrunkevitch 1949)



schizomida



Short-tailed whip scorpions are generally fairly small, today ranging from 3 to 15 mm in body length (Belojevic et al. 2024). They are subterranean dwellers in tropical and subtropical regions all around the world. Some species are found in leaf litter, while others are cave-dwellers (Rowland and Reddell 1977). Schizomids are usually blind—only a few living species have eyes with lenses (Cokendolpher and Sites 1988). As with many other arachnids that haunt the darkness, hairlike setae serve a sensory function.


The largest family, the Hubbardiidae, with seventy-six recognized genera, includes most extant species and is known in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar and Miocene amber from the Dominican Republic (De Armas and Teruel 2011; Müller et al. 2020). Calcoschizomus from Pliocene Arizona has also been placed in this family (Monjaraz-Ruedas et al. 2017). There was high diversity of schizomids in Cretaceous amber—overall, they were much smaller in size than extant species, and a higher proportion of them had corneated eyes (De Francesco Magnussen et al. 2022; Belojevic et al. 2024). So, after the Flood, there was a general increase in size, and a trend towards eyelessness.


A second extant family, the North American Protoschizomidae, has two living genera along with the Pliocene genus Onychothelyphonus (Monjaraz-Ruedas et al. 2017).


The monotypic fossil family Calcitronidae from Arizona (Petrunkevitch 1945) is sometimes disputed. The original fossils were found in polished ‘onyx marble’ pen bases from the commercial Bonner Quarry (Rowland and Sissom 1980) and donated to the Los Angeles County Museum. The mineralization formed from mineral-saturated hot springs deposition. When organisms fall into such waters, they can be “quickly covered in fine crystals and preserved” (Pierce 1950). Pierce (1951) was able to observe such crystallization around small invertebrates at a California mineral spring. The Cenozoic Bonner Quarry onyx was deposited in cracks and faults in the Permian Supai Formation, with Pierce (1951) suggesting that the “Bonner Quarry hot mineral waters from below were forced up into the rocks and caught typically wingless, desert-rock-inhabiting creatures” that are otherwise rarely fossilized. Calcitro fischeri was the original fossil in this family; a second species has also been described from Oligocene shales in China, but cannot yet be considered certain (Müller et al. 2020).


The Carboniferous Proschizomus may represent a sister group to the Schizomida (Belojevic et al. 2024).



Surazomus algodoal

Brazil

(CC BY 4.0 Ruiz and Valente 2023)



Calcitro fischeri

Pliocene Arizona

(Pierce 1951)



Onychothelyphonus bonneri (l)

Calcoschizomus latisternum (r)

Pliocene Arizona

(Pierce 1951)



amblypygi



Whip spiders, or tailless whip scorpions, have small to moderate-sized body lengths, but their legspans range from 2 to a bit over 7 inches in length. They lack a flagellum, but their first pair of legs are very long and antennae-like, giving them the ‘whip’ in their name. These ‘whips’ can be many times their body length. Amblypygids can be found in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world. They prefer to stay hidden under bark or leaf litter, and many are cavernicolous. Cave-dwelling may drive speciation in the order, as populations become reproductively isolated (Esposito et al. 2015). There are two suborders with five extant families (seventeen or so recognized genera), and one fossil family. One extant family, the Phrynidae, includes a Cretaceous (thus Flood strata) genus, Britopygus (Garwood et al. 2017). Other fossil genera do not nest nicely within extant families, though several can be placed within the two suborders.


The fossil record of the Amblypygi includes (Dunlop and Barov 2005; Dunlop et al. 2007; Haug and Haug 2021): a possible cuticle fragment in Devonian strata; several Carboniferous species from Mazon Creek nodules and the British Coal Measures; Cretaceous whip spiders from Brazil’s Crato Formation fossils and preserved in amber from Myanmar; Eocene Indian Cambay amber; and Miocene Mexican Chiapas amber and Dominican amber. Overall, the flattened bodies typified by prosomal shield and trunk (opisthosoma) are conservatively similar today to Flood fossils, though there has been more diversification in the extremities during the Cenozoic. The ‘oldest’ whip spider (according to the secular model), Weygoldtina, very closely resembles the living Paracharon (De Miranda et al. 2022). Paracharon is sometimes referred to as a phylogenetic relict or ‘living fossil,’ as the sole surviving genus of the suborder Palaeoamblypygi (De Miranda et al. 2024).



Phrynus sp.

Sint Eustatius, Caribbean

(CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Statia Wildlife)



Phrynus marginemaculatus

Florida

(Chad Arment)



Sorellophrynus carbonarius

(previously Protophrynus)

Carboniferous, Mazon Creek, IL

(Petrunkevitch 1913)



uropygi



Within the sole family, Thelyphonidae, there are fifteen recognized genera of extant whip scorpions, two fossil genera, and more than 100 living species. Additional fossil whip scorpion genera are known, but familial placement is undetermined. Whip scorpions occupy tropical and sub-tropical regions in North and South America and Asia. A single monotypic genus is found in West Africa. The giant vinegaroon that used to be called Mastigoproctus giganteus in the southern United States has been split up into seven species. Now, M. floridanus is recognized from southern Florida, M. cinteotl from southern Texas and Tamaulipas, and M. tohono from southeast Arizona and northeast Sonora (Barrales-Alcalá et al. 2018). Vinegaroons are well known for the irritant they spray on potential predators, consisting primarily of acetic acid (Eisner et al. 1961).


Within the fossil record, whip scorpions can be found in the Carboniferous of New England, Mazon Creek, and European Coal Measures (Germany, Netherlands, UK, Italy, Ukraine); Cretaceous amber from Myanmar; and Cretaceous deposits in the Crato Formation of Brazil (Dunlop and Martill 2002; Cai and Huang 2017; Selden and Ren 2017; Knecht et al. 2024; Santana et al. 2024). The oldest forms are very similar to modern specimens (Dunlop 1998; Knecht et al. 2024). Whip scorpion distribution and genetic research has led to a secular model of vicariant diversification from Pangea, with the modern whip scorpions originating “closer to the tropical seam between South America, Africa and Laurasia” (Clouse et al. 2017). (Interestingly, the African whip scorpion, Etienneus africanus, is much closer phylogenetically to the South American whip scorpions than to the Asian genera (Huff and Prendini 2009).) For a creationist, whip scorpions survived the Flood outside the Ark, but it is difficult to say whether pre-Flood distribution had any impact on post-Flood landing sites, which became centers of origin for post-Flood dispersal. Flood fossils, especially those in higher strata, would not necessarily indicate pre-Flood continental biogeography.





Thelyphonus sp., Malaysia​ (CC BY-SA 2.0 Bernard Dupont)





Mastigoproctus sp.​ (Chad Arment)



references



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