# Man-sized sea scorpion claw found



## Allegra (Nov 21, 2007)

I wouldn't want to time-travel to that period. 

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Man-sized sea scorpion claw found



> *The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.*
> 
> The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a Germany quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.
> The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.
> ...


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## tangaloomababe (Nov 21, 2007)

Cool!!!
Interesting article Allegra.  Imagine ordering your sea scorpion like a lobster, ummm I'll have that one, although one tends to think it might be the other way around, the sea scorpion ordering its "Human"
Not somewhere I would want to go swimming anyway!


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## Curt Chiarelli (Nov 21, 2007)

This is so fascinating Lily! 

Speaking as a lifetime arachnophobe, I find it particularly comforting to note that vertebrate predators have kept the size of arachnids down to a manageable size for the past several million years or so! Skinny-dippers everywhere, I'm sure, are as relieved as I!


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## HardScienceFan (Nov 21, 2007)

luckily ,mygalomorphid biogeography being what it is......
For everyone who wants to know such things:the gills of eurypterids have been found preserved as well.I think John Dalingwater is the expert  on those


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## Nesacat (Nov 21, 2007)

More evidence that Lovecraft hit the nail right on the head. I'd have loved to meet one of these, though I suspect it would have been thinking 'dinner'. Quite like spiders.


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## HardScienceFan (Nov 21, 2007)

[FONT=&quot]For Nesa
Darn,I should know the artist
The Eurypterid is pictured here devouring pteraspid agnathans
( jawless fish)[/FONT]


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## Talysia (Nov 21, 2007)

Wow, that's pretty impressive!  I wouldn't want to run into one of them whilst swimming, that's for sure.


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## Nesacat (Nov 21, 2007)

If that is not straight out of Lovecraft I don't know what it. It's frightening but very beautiful right down to the semblance of a face on its head.

Thank you Ben.


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## Curt Chiarelli (Nov 21, 2007)

Thanks for posting that John Sibbick illustration, Ben! (Another favourite talent amongst many others!)

Oh, you couldn't be more correct Nesa! Howard knew that we stored in our collective Jungian "race memory" the horrors of our ancestral home, the primordial deep.


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## The Ace (Nov 21, 2007)

The Eurypterids are extinct because they came off second-best against the vertebrates.  I wouldn't fancy meeting _any _predator which beat them into second place.


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## HoopyFrood (Nov 21, 2007)

That's an awesome creature, indeed.


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## Fake Vencar (Nov 21, 2007)

Thank God it isn't poisonous... or was it? I don't know and i don't think the article says so. If it was, then that would have made it one killer predator


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## The_Warrior (Nov 21, 2007)

Here's another article of it. It haves most of the things that the other one had.

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 21, 7:54 AM ET 


LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever. 

How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"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," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."

That competition ended long ago. 
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those." ___


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