Giant Sea Scorpion Fossil Found in China

BEIJING – Member paleontologists recently discovered the skeletal remains of a giant sea scorpion in China. This predator that lived about 435 million years ago has a size of about one meter.

Quoted from Live Science, Saturday (10/23/2021), the remains of a scorpion from the species Terropterus xiushanensis is an ancient eurypterid or arthropod closely related to the horseshoe crab, the researchers wrote in the November 30 issue of the journal Science Bulletin.

This fearsome predator is thought to have lived during the Silurian period around 443.8 million years ago. At that time, the scorpion became the apex underwater predator by pouncing on fish and mollusks and pushing them into the mouth.

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Eurypterids were detected in various sizes, with the smallest the size of a human hand and the largest as large as an adult human. Whereas species The newly discovered species is thought to be T. xiushanensis of the Mixopteriade family.

Bo Wang of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said data on the newly discovered animal was minimal.

“Our knowledge of this strange animal is limited to only four species in two genera described 80 years ago,” Wang said.

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The four species include Mixopterus kiaeri from Norway, Mixopterus multispinosus from New York, Mixopterus simonsoni from Estonia, and Lanarkopterus dolichoschelus from Scotland.

T. xiushanensis was also the first mixtopterid to be found on the supercontinent Gondwana, which formed after the large supercontinent Pangea split into two.

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