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."

Comments

Man Sized?

[tak amalak]

Try double-man sized. That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights. 2 times what an American weighs.

Re:Man Sized?

[tttonyyy]

Try double-man sized. That thing must weigh 4 times what a man weights. 2 times what an American weighs. It's all extrapolation. I bet it had a 46cm claw and a tiny disproportionate 4cm body with weedy legs, making it the early equivalent to the modern programmer and not the scary hideous gargantuan portrayed by the media.

Re:Man Sized?

[Kamokazi]

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.

Yes, but

[Red Flayer]

Can it rock you like a hurricane or summon the winds of change?

I, for one...

[tttonyyy]

...would be legging it the other way if I found that under a rock.

Seriously... f@#k that

[bmajik]

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.

Re:Seriously... f@#k that

[spun]

Whatever sentinent life showed up here a long time ago basically said "return to the ship and nuke the site from orbit" And umpteen million years later, instead of water dwelling arthropods with no technology, who can't even support their own weight on dry land, they've got to deal with a horde of vicious hairless monkeys with nukes of our own. They're probably kicking themselves right now, assuming their anatomy allows such a feat.

Ants vs Scorpions

[seyyah]

Jesus Christ. Where are our ant overlords when we need them?

Is this that unusual?

[kurt555gs]

Some of the restaurants in Joliet Illinois, where I live have cockroaches close to this size.

Cheers

Re:Is this that unusual?

[kilo_foxtrot84]

So, how do they serve them? Obediently.

You played way too much to RPGs when...

[Rastignac]

...you start seeing giant scorpions.