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

Bwhahaha!

[susano_otter]

Little does the future Los Angeles know that I have already deployed my own Giant Water Scorpion to attack them in their sleep, millenia hence. Crawl, my pretty! Crawl!

nightmarish

[SweetAndSourJesus]

You know, I'm really glad the human race took so long to get here. It was a good idea to wait until crazy shit like this died off. I get freaked out by cockroaches, can you imagine 2 1/2 meter scorpions cruising around your kitchen? That's the stuff nightmares are made from.

Ummmmm

[Qwerpafw]

Today is apparently the day of the funny postings. Gotta love it.

2.5m Water Scorpion Stalks Southern Africa
Tabloid headlines indeed :)

All I can say is: Where can I get mine?

Hmm...

[Scoria]

CmdrTaco is probably locating submitted articles that reference small, low-bandwidth websites and Slashdotting them to impress Kathleen.

This one is already gone, apparently.

(Congratulations, Taco. :p)

Speculation as to the cause of extinction. . .

[kfg]

seem to center around something known as the dreaded "Slashdot Effect."

KFG

Read the Article?

[Accipiter]

That's a pretty misleading headline.

Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.

In reality, all they found were trace fossils of its footprints, because it walked the area 260 million years ago.

In any case, I keep envisioning a bad, B-movie horror flick starring this dude. "Giant Scorpions Attack!", with sequels taking place in different major US cities. I'd almost say I would want to see Samuel L. Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the movie every time he's about to unleash his genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I doubt he'd do a B flick.

I wonder if getting stung by a 3 meter scorpion would provide time to be painful. Probably 20-30 seconds or so.

Eurypterid Park

[Skirwan]

I can only hope that before they went extinct one of these beasts was trapped in amber, and that somewhere on some privately-owned tropical island a group of scientists funded by a megalomaniacal millionaire are standing on the shoulders of geniuses and thinking more about whether they could than whether they should...

--
Damn the Emperor!

Another page

[fm6]

Here's an interesting page on the same topic. Note that water scropions have only a superficial resemblance to their landbound namesakes and aren't particularly nasty.

Re:Another page

[Kotetsu]

While you did find references to the modern insect sometimes called a water scorpion, it is not at all what is being referred to here. Water scorpion is an alternative name for sea scorpion, both common names for the eurypterids. One type of them also happens to be the state fossil of New York. While we probably can't say with real certainty just how nasty they might have been, I'd certainly be cautious around any 2 meter long, predatory arthropod.

Re:Another page

[Rogerborg]

I found this interesting artist's impression of how the giant fossil creature may have looked.

No, you can't have one

[sam_handelman]

Before anyone even starts with the Jurassic park stuff, it is not possible.

260 Million years is long enough for every carbon atom in a piece of bone several feet thick to exchange for silicon. Time(absolute) =~ 20,000 Million yrs.; we're talking about 1% of the age of the universe here, guys. It is a very, very long time.

So, even if you did recover something that looked like a biological molecule from a sample of this thing, all of the information content would have been destroyed long, long ago.

Scorpion growth factors, on the other hand, are well understood. In a strict sense, genetically modified scorpions are more like a modern scorpion that the one in the article. However, they are nearly as cool, they give you some idea of how such a creature may have lived, and you can feed fools to them when they've foiled your plans for the last time.

So, if anyone wants an eight foot long scorpion, I've started making them and I - Get away! No, no, I am your master! Aieeeee!

Anyway, this critter is weird but it pales in comparison to the real freaky shit in the burgess shale. If you want to know what body types evolution has abandoned (but might take up elsewhere in the galaxy?) check this out. It is a must read for anyone with an interest in writing 'hard' science fiction with aliens in it.

"Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!" - King Arthur Pendragon

I don't understand

[meggito]

What makes them beleive that these fossilized footprints are directly related to a scorpion that they have no other proof of?
They talk about finding the fossil and how it means there was a giant scorpion, but not once does it say why they beleive that these trails were left by some giant scorpion. Why do these two long blobs automatically belong to a giant scorpion? Did they find a fossil? Was there some semblance between these footprints and a common day scorpion? They find an impression of a giant tail? I see absolutely 0 in any way tieing the footprints to a scorpion.

How many?

[Max the Merciless]

Does this giant scorpian have 5 asses?

Well...

[krmt]

I would want to see Samuel L. Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the movie every time he's about to unleash his genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I doubt he'd do a B flick.

Well, he did do Episode I...

pizza maker?

[JonWan]

Hmmmm Giant scoripion, and a pizza-maker. Sounds like it might be a hit in Japan.

Don't worry; they do.

[Chris Burke]

How do they know it's a giant scorpion? Because they're god-damned smart, that's how.

Seriously, I'm not being a smart-ass. Have you ever watched a documentary on these people? They're incredible. They'll be at some site, and the paleontologist will come across what looks like a tiny white rock stuck in the ground, and he'll exclaim "Wow! It looks like the pelvis of a juvenile stegosaurous!" And you say "How the hell does he know that?" and then they dig up the fossile, and what do you know... Juvenile stegosaur. Sometimes they actually explain how they figure this stuff out... And while the conclusion seemed odd at the time, by the time they're done explaining, you're sorry you ever doubted them because they're god-damn smart. Frankly, I have no trouble believing that this guy recognized the tracks of an ancient scorpion on sight.

Though to more directly answer your question -- I'm sure this isn't the -very first- evidence of ancient, giant scorpions they've found. So basically, they're going off what they already know, and this fossil expands that knowledge.

You should watch more Discovery Channel. It's the best thing on TV.

Re:suggestion to avoid slashdotting these poor sit

[psych031337]

Sometimes they don't even last five minutes under the load of traffic

...nor would slashdot...

Seriously, the expansion of the pipe and the server farm needed to accomodate the mirroring of all of the links posted in stories would pretty quickly ruin OSDN (who own and fund /. last time i checked). Maybe someone could code a google applet (they are still running this programming contest, right?) that checks on /. once a minute and automatically refreshes the cache for the links posted in new stories. And then posts a comment with google cache links that could be used as a mirror even *before* the server is hammered to a clinical death.

King Crab

[Perdo]

What happened to the theory that a creature with a chitinous exoskeleton could not support it's own weight if it was much bigger than a modern day king crab? King Crabs are maybe 2 meters across and 25 pounds at best. Once out of the water, an exoskeleton can support much less weight otherwise we would be overrun by 25 lb cockroaches.