This Scorpion Really Was King (ca. 390,000,000 BC)
In a quarry about 200 miles east from Frankfurt, Germany, archaeologists discovered the fossilized claw of what would have been an 8-foot long sea scorpion during its lifetime approximately 390 million years ago. The claw was 46 centimeters long – nearly half a meter! – and it is fairly certain that the ancient creature would have spent its time paddling along in rivers or swamps.
That isn’t to say that it couldn’t walk on land. According to the Biology Letters journal which published the report on the claw, the ‘Jaekelopterus rhenaniae’ probably only lived in water because it was easier to get around that way, considering the construction of its body – an arthropod of this size probably had some trouble walking effectively on land.
Considering the size of the claw and its resultant comparison – the sea scorpion would have been larger than a human being – researchers are now more convinced than ever that creatures such as spiders, crabs, insects, and other living things that are tiny in today’s modern world were much, much larger in the past. At the very least, this ancient sea scorpion exceeds the record for known arthropods by nearly a half meter.
These ancient sea scorpions existed during a time in the history of earth when the atmosphere’s oxygen levels were significantly higher than they are today – and some scientists believe that as a result, this helped creatures such as the giant arthropod and other invertebrates to develop super-sized bodies.
However, over time as vertebrate predators made their way into the main sphere, larger creatures such as these would have been seen as prey – for plenty of predators, bigger prey is better, which likely resulted in all the larger creatures being killed off first, and the smaller specimens surviving. By the time humans came on the scene, these large creatures had been dwindled down to a much smaller size, which continued until there were only the tiny specimens that are known today.
Although the fossilized claw of this sea scorpion dates to approximately 390 million years old, it is believed that the species actually made its land debut approximately 450 million years ago.
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