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.

Re:Man Sized?

[IANAAC]

Thanks to the McDonaldization of Europe, there are now plenty of fatties waddling around the old continent too.

At least you can get a beer or wine with your KFC.

Re:Man Sized?

[d0rp]

Man sized sea scorpion? Must be a cousin of the infamous Claw Shrimp

Re:Man Sized?

[zgregoryg]

I should point out that these sort of creatures existed when the earth's climate was much hotter than today. ;-)

Amazing

[downix]

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?

Re:Amazing

[gEvil (beta)]

Nobody does. It's believed that the last ice age killed off many larger versions of creatures that are very similar to what we have today. Think pony:horse comparisons, but where our modern day horses were considered the "ponys".

Re:Amazing

[Daniel_Staal]

Exactly: We are already at the max size for our current skeletal design, as anyone over 6-4 (about 190 centimeters for those of you who use a logical measurement system) should be able to tell you. To grow any taller we'd need further extension of our ribcage (or something) to support our lower torso better.

Anyone past that height currently either has back problems, or keeps themselves in decent shape so that their mucles can take some of the load in moderate high-stress situations, like falling over when you trip.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point maybe valid, but your analogy is off. Modern day horses are giants compared to their ancestors. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse

Re:Amazing

[Red Flayer]

Nobody does. It's believed that the last ice age killed off many larger versions of creatures that are very similar to what we have today.

The current widelw-accepted theory is that human predation caused those extinctions in the Americas, which was enabled by the last ice age (from the diaspora of peoples via the north pacific land bridge). Large animals that did not co-evolve with humans were easy prey for voracious hunter-gatherers. Large carnivorous animals followed, due to both reduction of their food supply by human hunters, and by direct hunting by humans.

In Eurasia, reduced habitat due to encroaching ice reduced mammoth populations, not just because of less food, but also because it forced the mammoths to migrate to areas where human predation was a bigger problem. Not sure if this is considered the current theory for the cave bear as well.

Re:Amazing

[CrashPoint]

Speaking of giants, they only found 1 of these things, not a whole race of them. How do they know it wasn't the "Andre the Giant" of the sea scorpions?

Because were that the case, they would also have found two smaller sea scorpions in the same place; one wearing black and the other looking for the six-clawed scorpion that killed his father.

Re:Amazing

[aproposofwhat]

LMAO :0)

Mr Dawkins would mod you +5 - Intelligent Design, I'm sure.

The giraffe ancestor, IIRC, is some sort of camel, or at least that's what I dimly remember from my schooldays.

Re:Amazing

[cnettel]

While this is true of the horse (and current equine are probably the largest ones ever), there are many almost-current-size horse-relatives in the fossil records. They just didn't survive, and the ancestors to the current species of horse did. The "gradually larger" trend is visible only with hindsight.

Re:Amazing

[GreggBz]

Passenger Pigeon, look it up. Extinct by the hands of humans in 1/100th of the time this took, and there were 5 BILLION of them. Scientists come in all political alignments. Most of them agree, that this is a very sound theory. The impact of humans upon this Earth is undeniable and factual. I don't care how you feel about it.

Yes, but

[Red Flayer]

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

DNA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:DNA

[monomania]

Well, it being a fossil of an ordinary type, there's no biological material remaining whatsoever; from the photograph you'll note that it's merely the chitinous exoskeleton of the claw -- it's entirely mineralized, as with so many such fossils; so, no DNA. Such cases, wherein soft tissue is preserved, are incredibly rare. I share your interest however in being able to recreate such a beast. Looks like tasty eatin'. Certainly not kosher. But tasty, I'll wager.

I, for one...

[tttonyyy]

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

2.5 metres

[niceone]

The previous record was 2 metres, already quite scary enough. Well, I hope they keep updating us on any slightly larger seafood they find.

Arthur Clarcke

[Ploum]

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 )

Headline

[Ristol]

"Sea scorpion fossil belonged to biggest bug ever: scientists" Wonderful editing they have these days.

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.

no no no....

[pablo_max]

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.

Uh oh

[Joe the Lesser]

We're gonna need bigger a bigger boot...

Ants vs Scorpions

[seyyah]

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

Re:Ants vs Scorpions

[Joe the Lesser]

Whoever wins, we lose.

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.

Dubious extrapolation

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's pretty dubious. You can't extrapolate the size of the animal from the size of a claw. Many arthropods today-- lobsters, fiddler crabs, stone crabs-- have an enlarged claw. Particularly if sexual selection acts on the size of the claw ("that guy has a really big one. Ooh! He must be fierce").

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.

Re:Dubious extrapolation

[Anonymous Coward]

Near-complete specimens of pterygotid eurypterids (which is what this thing is) are already known, and were already known to exceed 2 metres in length. For example, look at this specimen of Pterygotus from a famous locality in New York where eurytperid specimens are mined. So, this isn't some random extrapolation where the remaining anatomy is complete guesswork, it is based on the typical anatomy in the group. Pterygotus and its relatives was freaking huge. While it is true that this specimen could be from a species with an exaggerated claw size compared to other pterygotids, the claws described in the paper are pretty darn big, even for one of these sea scorpions.

Re:Dubious extrapolation

[aeroelastic]

Actually, with fossils, you sometimes have to do a lot of extrapolation. Very often you only find bone fragments or shell parts, especially with rare species. Euripterid fossils are relatively common, and the different species (300+) are fairly well documented. It is not a stretch to get a reasonably accurate length measurement based on one part. It would be similar to estimating human height based on hand size.

It has been a while since my paleo-biology days, but I have no recollection of asymmetric body structures of any kind of euripterid. A quick search turns up no records of any species with different sized claws. Euripterids are more closely related to scorpions or spiders than crabs anyway. Info here, under classification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelicerata

Re:Dubious extrapolation

[Floritard]

IIRC stength varies with the square of the size of a thing. That's why giant ants in B-movies are a dumb concept. You can have itty bitty scorpions with huge claws they can carry around effortlessly, but once you start getting larger and larger you need to have more scorpion body not just to have that thing remain attached, but to be able to carry the thing around and be able to use it. I would think you'd want to be able to manipulate a huge claw pretty effortlessly for it to be of any use, otherwise it'd just be holding you back, and to do so you'd need big scorpion muscles. Although the thing is in the water so that could give you some leeway on weight, but still you'd need a big body to be able swing the claw around and not have it swing you.

Re:Dubious extrapolation

[siliconwafer]

While only a claw was found this time, I'd like to point out that this is not the first very large Eurypterid to be found. A complete Eurypterid was found, that is a few meters in length, at Lang's Quarry near Herkimer, NY. (Eurypterid fossils are commonly found there, and in many locations across Upstate NY and Ontario, Canada). A cast is on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario Canada for the public to see. I don't recall the exact length, but it's taller than I am (at 5'11"). Most Eurypterids are pretty small. I have a collection of complete Eurypterid specimens but none of mine are more than 12" in length.

Wait a Minute

[camperdave]

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.

Re:Wait a Minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Think again.

It's a different species, but a close relative with similar anatomy.

Scorpion? Why?

[Mark_in_Brazil]

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?

2nd Fossil Imprint

[Hoi Polloi]

They didn't mention that the fossil scorpion was found under the imprint of a 10m long foot.

we call them land-sea-scorpions.

[Floydius]

I tame them.

Other large fossil athropods

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:This is appalling!

[PhoenixOr]

Or unless John Hammond gets his hands on one...

Re:Dubious extrapolation.. Hold on...

[davidsyes]

While I check your theory against my tape measure...