Eight Foot Long Scorpions Once Roamed The Earth: Scientists

If you have a fear of insects you may not want to read what comes next. But if you do, you’ll likely be profoundly grateful you live in the modern era. British scientists have come across fossilized remains of what may be the world’s biggest bug – an ancient sea scorpion that measured as much as eight feet tall.

The creature was bigger than a car, taller than a human and yielded mighty claws with pincers that could crush its enemies. And it would have taken more than just a can of Raid to wipe out this not-so-wee-beastie.

Researchers found the evidence in some 390-million-year-old rocks in a German quarry that may once have been a seabed. “I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab,” recalls paleontologist Markus Poschmann. “After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw.

“Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it.”

The finished piece of this ancient puzzle astounded its discoverer and his lab partner, Simon Braddy. “This is an amazing discovery,” the associate admits. “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.”

Scientists think the ancient giant may be the ancestor of other modern day scorpions, spiders, mites and ticks, all of which are thankfully much smaller than their predecessors. They suggest the monsters thrived for millions of years because there were no other species that could easily defeat them and they may have been cannibalistic, eating other creatures and fighting to consume each other.

“The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon,” Braddy surmises. “Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates – backboned animals like ourselves.”

So the next time you swat at a fly, a mosquito or a spider doing a creepy crawl or taking flight around your home, remember what might have been. And be grateful the sting of time has removed this stinger out of time.

Graphic courtesy: The Royal Society