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HN pedantry time: >discovered a remarkable new spider species... Recently evolved then? Or perhaps... "An international team of researchers has recently dis
by jimnotgym 4mo ago
HN pedantry time:
>discovered a remarkable new spider species...
Recently evolved then?
Or perhaps...
"An international team of researchers has recently discovered a remarkable spider species..."
- jagged-chisel 4mo agoIt’s a new discovery for humans.
- chrisweekly 4mo agothat's precisely their point
- jagged-chisel 4mo agoNot seeing the "problem." To humans, it's new. It's a new addition to the list of "species we know about." It's a new spider species. This is how language has been used for a long time.
- dofm 4mo agoThe notion of a species only really exists in the human world; it's a human concept. So the discovery of a new species is the discovery of a new classification need. It is new to science. (At a first approximation, essentially all existing species are new on an evolutionary level — isn't it the case that something like 99.9% of all life on earth is newer than a million years old?)