Okay, it’s not a recent scorpion. It’s at least 435 million years old. But from its size, it must have been really terrible. The remains of the giant scorpion in China surprised archaeologists.
Terror at sea
It’s a huge sea scorpion. It inhabited the waters of the region in the Silurian period, between 443.8 million and 419.2 million years ago. Like details Live Science, the Terropterus xiushanensis was about a meter long. It belonged to the eurypterid family, a group of extinct arthropods. It is related to modern arachnids and horseshoe crabs.
At the time, scorpions were superpredators of the underwater environments they inhabited. They attacked unsuspecting fish and mollusks. With their giant, spiny legs, they would grab them in their mouths and devour them. One can imagine what a threat their ferocity could be. The eurypterids varied in size. The smallest of them was about the size of a human hand.
How big could these sea scorpions get? The largest specimens could reach the size of an adult human being, he stresses LS. The T. xiushanensis is the first species of the family myxopteriade over the past eight decades.
First remains
In the region, there was formerly the supercontinent of Gondwana. The southern continental block formed after Pangaea split in two. The giant scorpion remains in China are the first in the region.
“We must conduct future studies, especially in Asia. They may reveal a more cosmopolitan distribution of myxopterids. And perhaps other groups of eurypterids. There is still much to be discovered on ancient coasts,” the researchers believe.
Details of the discovery are published in the scientific journal Science Bulletin. And they serve to give us an idea of how terrible it must have been to come face to face with one of them.
