New Site Explores Horseshoe Crabs — Among World's Oldest Creatures
May 10, 2004

Later this month, a million or more horseshoe crabs will appear on the beaches of the Delaware Bay to spawn — a fascinating sight involving one of the world's oldest creatures.

Estimated to be at least 300 million years old, horseshoe crabs crawled around the Earth's shallow coastal seas for at least 100 million years before dinosaurs arrived. Now a new Web site developed by Delaware Sea Grant provides facts and insights into these strange-looking creatures with armored shells and spiked tails.

For example, the site explains that the circulatory fluid of horseshoe crabs — analogous to human blood — is blue due to a chemical reaction between copper and an oxygen-carrying protein called hemocyanin. It also reveals that much of what is known about the function of human eyes is the result of studies that began over 50 years ago on the large, compound eyes of the horseshoe crab.

http://www.ocean.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/

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