 | This illustration shows the size of the giant sea scorpion relative to a human man. The eight-foot-long creature lived between 460 and 244 million years ago. The fossil claw is a foot-and-a-half long. |
The gigantic fossil claw of a 390 million-year-old sea scorpion recently found
in Germany shows that ancient arthropods — spiders, insects, crabs and
the like — were surprisingly larger than their modern-day counterparts. — By Janet Emanuel
T H I S
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS
Fossil from giant sea scorpion found
“Imagine an eight-foot-long scorpion,” says O. Erik Tetlie, postdoctoral
associate in Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics, and an author
of the report online in Royal Society Biology Letters. “The claw itself
is a foot-and-a-half long — indicating that this ancient arthropod is much
larger than previous estimates — and certainly the largest seen to date.”
Colleague and co-author Markus Poschmann discovered the fossil claw from this
ancient sea scorpion, Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, in a quarry near Prüm in
Germany. The sea scorpion, which lived between 460 and 255 million years ago,
is the latest addition to a group of extinct creatures that scientists have
known about for some time that includes the largest arthropods ever found,
based on both body fossils and trace fossils. According to the authors, it
is believed that these extinct aquatic creatures are the ancestors of modern
scorpions and spiders.
Tetlie notes that geologists are debating the reasons for the evolution
of these giant arthropods, “While some believe they evolved with the
higher levels of atmospheric oxygen that were present in the past, some say
they evolved in a parallel ‘arms race’ with early armoured fish
that were their likely prey,” he says.
Lead author Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University
of Bristol, United Kingdom, says: “This is an amazing discovery. We have
known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized
scorpions, colossal cockroaches and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realized,
until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.”
The Norwegian Research Council funded Tetlie’s work on the evolutionary
relationships of the ancient organisms.
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