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Man Sized Sea Scorpion Fossil Found
hereisnowhy writes "A giant fossilized claw discovered in Germany belonged to an ancient sea scorpion that was much bigger than the average man, an international team of geologists and archaeologists reported Tuesday. In a report in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, the team said the claw indicates that sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenania was almost 2.5 meters long, making it the largest arthropod — an animal with a segmented body, jointed limbs and a hard exoskeleton — ever found. In the report, the authors said the scorpion exceeds previous size records for arthropods by almost half a meter."
Try double-man sized. That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights. 2 times what an American weighs.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Who says the age of giants was only during the dinosaur era? It appears more and more that nature gets into these size races, then massive killing off, then start over. I wonder how long before we're standing at over 15 feet ourselves?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Irypterids, eurypterids, werypterids. Bet they got some tasty tails.
This guy's the limit!
Can it rock you like a hurricane or summon the winds of change?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I hope they can get DNA from this fossil. If we had these things crawling around, even the Nanny State couldn't prevent idiots from surviving.
...would be legging it the other way if I found that under a rock.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
The previous record was 2 metres, already quite scary enough. Well, I hope they keep updating us on any slightly larger seafood they find.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Mmm, am I the only one for which giant sea scorpions sounds more like songs of distant earth than rock music ?
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth )
Ploum.net.
"Sea scorpion fossil belonged to biggest bug ever: scientists" Wonderful editing they have these days.
What wouldn't Jesus do?!
I don't know which one is the scarier:
-finding proof of alien races living deep down in our oceans
-having a wikipedia articles dedicated to the aforementioned races
That's the second biggest scorpion I ever saw...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
You're telling me scorpions, which are scary enough at 2 inches in length, used to run around here at 2.5 meters in length ?
I'll tell you what happened..
Whatever sentinent life showed up here a long time ago basically said "return to the ship and nuke the site from orbit"
And you know what? They were right.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Anyone who has seen Clash of the Titans knows that this story is just silly. It was clear that giant scorpions were all over the entire region. There were not too many other giant insects, but there were swamps and robot owls....this much is clear.
I think the previous record of 2 meters would have been tall man sized. 2.5 meters is closer to the height of Robert Wadlow (2.73m), the tallest man we have on record.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Quick! Somebody get a gigantic bowl of drawn butter!
We're gonna need bigger a bigger boot...
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Jesus Christ. Where are our ant overlords when we need them?
Some of the restaurants in Joliet Illinois, where I live have cockroaches close to this size.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
So is this related to the legendary Jackalope?
Pass the (sniff) butter.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
...you start seeing giant scorpions.
-- Rastignac was here.
Take a look, for example, at this picture of a Fiddler crab, or even this picture of a stone crab, and then scale the "computer-generated visualization" in the article to that claw to body size, and you'll estimate that the guy is, maybe, half a meter long.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Let me be the first to welcome our redundant-slashdot-meme-posting overlords.
The article said that all they found was the claw. Yet they've got a drawing of the whole creature. So the whole thing is 90% guesswork. There's no indication on the drawing as to which parts are factual, and which are guesswork. For all we know, this could have been a lobster, or a crab, rather than a scorpion. It could even have been from a small species where an individual had some giganticism disease. Unless they find the whole creature, there's no way of knowing.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Wesnoth has had these for long:
http://zapicm.freeshell.org/stable/Giant_Scorpion.html
Ever see a lobster with a disproportionately huge claw? I've seen claws nearly half the size of the attached body. How can they say with any certainty that this thing's body is as large as a person based on a fossil of merely one claw?
His design was better, lol!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen
Here it is for those wondering, looks like it's eating something
http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195657934.jpg
Why do they call this a scorpion? Did it have a poisonous stinger on its tail? It looks like in their total speculation about the creature (the actual fossil was just a claw), they drew (see image in TFA) a creature with a swimming tail, like a lobster or a shrimp.
Wouldn't "giant lobster" or "giant shrimp" be a better description of a large sea arthropod? Maybe it doesn't sound as exciting, but why would they call it a "sea scorpion" if there is no reason to believe it had the most well-known feature of land scorpions?
Additionally, how do they know it wasn't a much smaller beast with proportionally larger claws, given that according to TFA, one of the leading theories about how and why such a huge arthropod evolved was an "arms race" with early armored fish?
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Aha! Fallout had it right for once! Now all we need is to find a two-headed cow and then the legend of the Vault Dweller will have no doubters ever again!
it was a Zergling? That claw sure looks like it.
Boy!, fetch me my +50 damage Warhammer and enchanted armour!
descendants of Sub Zero file suit to get DNA testing done to see if in fact it matches the crime scene of Sub Zero's allegeded murder.
They found a Claw Shrimp! Big as a man!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's probably more closely related to a land scorpion than seahorses and sea lions are to their land counterparts....
They didn't mention that the fossil scorpion was found under the imprint of a 10m long foot.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I was wondering why Nigel Marvin didn't return from his last trip.
I tame them.
I was under the impression the the primary limiting factor for the size of an arthropod was the creature's copper-based blood. Copper based blood, when compared to iron based, is a much poorer carrier of oxygen - hence the size of the creature must remain relatively small, else the blood will be depleted of oxygen by the time it reaches the extremities.
Do scorpions, lobsters, shrimp have some form of de-centralized respiratory intake, such that the blood could be re-oxygenated at several sites around the circulatory loop?
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
That's nothing!
Ancient Japan had larger enemy crabs.
crab people, crab people, crab people!
Craaaab people, craaaab people, taste like crab, talk like people...
They've got these things in the back of our local Chinese restaurant. Keeps the rat population down.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Lookit this one! She's a beauty! ... easy honey, you're alroight ... Oim not gonna huht ya ...
She's gotta be ovah eight feet lohng!
Lookit the soize of these claws!
She uses these
to snap her proiy in half!
sigh
I'm totally sure I saw a documentary on this on the SF channel the other day.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
said the claw indicates that sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenania was almost 2.5 meters long...making it the largest arthropod ever found.
Other potential size challengers include the Arthropleura, which was a giant centipede-like critter. Although, it probably lacked the bulk of the sea scorpion.
Another contender was the Anomalocaris, which looked kind of like a giant brine shrimp with two front tenticals. It was the first known "large" preditor. It's one of the odder Cambrian critters. However, it's classification as an arthropod is still up in the air. It may be from an extinct sister phyla to arthropods.
Table-ized A.I.
They weren't actually scorpions, but they were in a group that is closer to the arachnids and scorpions than to the crustaceans. WQikipedia, as usual, has all the details on the eurypterids.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
These fossils have been found before. The species was on a Discovery or Animal Planet special.
You guys are reading too far into this. This is obviously the Decepticon that attacked the Air Force.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
...actually drowned and became a fossile.
Onda Technology Institute
They didn't make up the term "sea scorpion" for this find. It's the colloquial term for eurypterids, which are a well known class of extinct arthropods.
The stinger may be the most well-known feature of land scorpions to to lay people, but there are a number of body structures of sea scorpions that are similar to land scorpions. These features, and the general shape of the creature, led to the term sea scorpion.
The claw might be from a creature with outsized claws, but it's likely that it's from a creature with claws that are in the same proportion to its body as all the others they've found from the same species. This type of extrapolation is not unusual in paleontology, where they deal with incomplete fossils all the time.
And regarding the "arms race," note that body size itself is a weapon. That is, weapons don't have to be what we immediately recognize as weapons: claws, teeth, armor, stingers, etc. There were dinosaurs that developed what were obviously weapons to fight increasingly-large predators (triceratoops with the horns, ankylosaurus with the body armor and tail club, stegosaurus with the spiked tail) but the gigantic size of a brachiosaurus was a weapon as well. Similarly, a sea scorpion growing larger, but maintaining the same proportions, is also participating in an arms race.
/snark
But where is that in comparison to sea cucumber:land cucumber?
From TFA:
> "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"
I think he meant "damned-huge dragonflies".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I heard this is what killed it. . .
These giant scorpions also developed the internet, the PS3, and lite beer over 250 million years before humanity. However, they were smaller than we think. The enlarged claw was caused by excessive masturbation to internet pr0n.
if you believe your sig, no wonder politicians keep screwing us - you think good words = good heart? too simple, man, too simple.
Not even ONE "I for one, welcome..." joke. When I read the story on cnn.com, I came over here assuming I'd see like 20 of those jokes. But not even one? C'mon, this story was tailor made for the meme!
Well...I, for one, welcome our new non meme-using slashdot readers.
blah blah blah
It's the scorps from "The Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke. Did anybody else read that one? It was set on a planet almost entirely covered in ocean and the human colonists discovered slightly intelligent, 2-meter long lobsters.
...throw another shrimp on the barbie.
;-)
And that's MR. SHRIMP to you.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Eurypterids have been studied since 1825. We know a lot about them. There are many many many complete specimens and they've been studied at length. I have an entire collection that I've found myself in private quarries. There is no doubt in the community that they were predators and that they did indeed have a poisonous stinger.
We can't see it stinging another creature today just as we cannot see the T-Rex eating another dinosaur today. That doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I thought they dug up Karl Rove again
The problem with these one off fossil finds is, what I like to call, the Yao Ming & Willie Shoemaker problem. For example: if in 100,000 years alien explorers come to Earth long after mankind is gone and dig up only the bones of Willie Shoemaker or Yao Ming, they're get a very wrong impression about what average humans look like.
The same problem applies to any animal species we uncover. We cannot assume the average size of a species by a single discovery of remains because they have too high a change of being an aberration. Therefore, there's a good chance that the remains found are of a "Yao Ming" of that species.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Does posting anonymously remove moderations?
While I check your theory against my tape measure...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The article is wrong about the location. Pruem is actually located 200 kilometers west of Frankfurt (close to the Belgian border), in a region called the Eifel.
I'm disappointed that the slashdot editors changed "person" to "man" in the title. Disappointed too that the article uses the word "man" to refer to a generic person. I thought that kind of terminology had been left behind.
Of the sand sharks(the fictional kind) which looked like a mix between a manta ray and scorpion.Nature is stranger then fiction.
Mr. President, we cannot ALLOW a body size gap!
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
ZOIDBERG?
>Try double-man sized. That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights. 2 times what an American weighs. >Obviously you watch too much TV, if you think the American weight average is double everyone else. Just because you see extreme cases all the time doesn't mean that everyone in America is like that. We don't have THAT many bulemic movie stars to throw the curve off that much...we're at least 3 or 4 times fatter than the rest of the world, not just double. Sheesh. > > That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights, about the same weight as an average American (2 short ton [1,814 Kg]). By the year 2015 Americans will be so heavy that most of the midwest will become lower than sea level, the rocky and appellation mountain ranges will flatten, New York and California will sink into the ocean and the U.S. military will not be able to fly their planes (except of course the B-1 bomber can still drop 1 bomb weighing 2 lb.), sail their ships (with more than 20 people) and no weapons - except maybe an M16 with no bullets and soldiers cannot carry their weapons (lack of oxygen). . No wonder the U.S. government wants pizza, pepsi and other FAT foods in the schools and promote families to eat that shit at McDonnell's, Wendy's and other take outs. It is a lot easier to control FAT PIGS than skinny and healthy humans.
In ancient Germany, bugs smash you!
Once you start down the off-topic path, forever will it rule your destiny. Consume you it will. Or something like that.
Speaking of other countries where obesity is becoming a problem, I read somewhere not very long ago (in geological terms, anyway) that the first known civilization to show evidence of cardiac illness was Egypt, which was also the first to harvest grain and make beer. Long story short, white flour and simple carbohydrates have a higher ratio of empty calories to nutrient than just about anything else. So, unless you eat them in ridiculous quantities or eat something else, they won't nourish you very well. Pastry and liquor turn out to be the bane of humanity. Who's surprised?
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..