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?

[d0rp]

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

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.