2.5m Water Scorpion Stalks Southern Africa

MeredihtJT writes: "The giant water scorpion well over two metres long made its way slowly over the sea floor, about 100m to 200m below the surface of the water. It would take another 260 million years for South African Palaentologist, geologist and 'pizza-maker' Roger Smith to find it."

Comments

Re:I don't understand

[bkr1_2k]

That was my first impression as well. How can they suggst eating habits and body distinctions (possible tail stinger or large claws) from foot prints right? Or for that matter, how can they be sure the footprints were produced by anything like a scorpion? Far down in the article, it mentions that a fossilized skeleton of one of these was found in the early '80s. "These combs are preserved in a much older giant eurypterid specimen collected near Prince Albert in the 1980s."
That may be where all this hype came from, putting a name with a face so to speak.
I still think that these guys are full of it. Even if you have a fossilized skeleton and foot prints, that doesn't give room for conjecture on subspecies of the same creature. There is no reason to think, for example, that there were some "breeds" that had claws and some that had other methods of capturing prey, as the article suggests.
Also, the article is somewhat contradictory, calling this thing a predator "like these [modern arachnids], eurypterids were almost exclusively predatory in habits, feeding on living prey such as other arthropods, soft-bodied invertebrates, and fish." Further on the article says; "but there is good reason to think that it was not a fearsome predator like many of its smaller terrestrial and aquatic relatives." It can't be both a predator and a non-predator. This article is pure conjecture without further proof in some other form or confirmation by other paleontologists.

bkr