Fossil researchers find huge scorpion in German quarry

Nov 21, 2007, 14:36 GMT

Berlin - A German palaeontologist has found the fossilized claw of a giant scorpion-like creature that crawled the earth almost 400 million years ago in a quarry in the west of the country, the journal Biology Letters reported Wednesday.

'This is an amazing discovery,' said Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in England, who co-authored the report.

'We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were,' he added.

The discovery was made by palaeontologist Markus Poschmann while working in a quarry near Pruem in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Their article said the discovery of the 390-million-year-old giant fossil claw proved that arthropods (spiders, insects and crabs with segmented bodies, jointed limbs and a hard external skeleton) were much larger in the past than previously thought.

The claw is from a sea scorpion called Jaekelopterus rhenaniae that lived between 460 million and 255 million years ago. It is 46 centimetres long, indicating that the sea scorpion to which it belonged was around 2.5 metres in length.

This is about 50 centimetres longer than previous estimates for these sea scorpions, which are seen as the forerunners of today's scorpions.

The journal added that some scientists believed giant arthropods evolved as a result of higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past.

Others say they were competing with the armoured fish of the period.

'It is more likely that some ancient arthropods were big because there was little competition from the vertebrates, as we see today,' Braddy said.

'If the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly increased, it doesn't mean all the bugs would get bigger,' he added in reassurance.