YANG DINGHUA/NIGPAS
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Terropterus xiushanensis is an ancient sea scorpion that reaches one meter in length—the size of a dog.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—The discovery of ancient animal fossils continues to grow, not only those that live on land but also in the sea. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of scorpion ancient sea, recent.
Scorpion ancient sea or Terropterus xiushanensis It has a length of 1 meter. Reported from Live Science, this animal that lives in the China Sea uses its large, thorny arms to trap prey.
Terropterus xiushanensis is a eurypterid, an ancient arthropod closely related to modern arachnids and horseshoe crabs. One of the authors of this study, Bo Wang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and the Center for Excellence in Life, Chinese Academy of Science reveal the uses of the spiny limbs of this ancient marine animal.
“It is thought to be used to catch prey and is analogous to the ‘catch basket’ made by the prickly pedipalps on whip spiders,” said Bo Wang, quoted from the statement. Live Science.
The pedipalpus is the extra leg on the arachnid. It usually serves to channel sperm from the male spider to its female partner. In some arachnids such as whip spiders (whip spider) pedipalpus is used to catch prey.
Scorpion This ancient sea lived during the Silur period, between about 443.8 million and 419.2 million years ago. At that time, scorpion it is in a high position as a predator of underwater reconnaissance. This animal pounces on fish and molluscs, snaps with the pedipalps and pushes them into the mouth.
This new species, Terropterus xiushanensis is the first to be discovered from the Mixopteriade family in the last 80 years. It is known that eurypterids themselves have various sizes, from the smallest the size of a human hand to the largest, as large as an adult human.
“Our knowledge of this strange animal is limited to only four species in two genera described 80 years ago, Mixopterus kiaeri from Norway, Mixopterus multispinosus from New York, Mixopterus simonsoni from Estonia and Lanarkopterus dolichoschelus from Scotland,” explained Bo Wang.
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Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
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Fossils of Terropterus xiushanensis.
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This study was published in the Science Bulletin under the title First mixopterid eurypterids (Arthropoda Chelicerata) from the Lower Silurian of South China. The researchers wrote that Terropterus xiushanensis differ from other mixopteriades primarily in their appendage morphology, including spination patterns, relative lengths of each submeasures (arthropod leg segment) and shape coxae.
In connection with the possibility that Terropterus xiushanensis one of the top predators in marine life because there are no longer competing vertebrates with large sizes in Southern China. This species is also the first mixtopterid found on the supercontinent Gondwana.
“Our first Gondwanan mixopterid, along with other eurypterids from China and several undescribed specimens exhibited a lack of collection bias in this group,” the experts wrote in their study.
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YANG DINGHUA/NIGPAS
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These ancient sea scorpions lived during the Silurian period, between about 443.8 million and 419.2 million years ago. At that time, this scorpion was in the top position as a predator from underwater reconnaissance.
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“Future work, particularly in Asia, could reveal a more cosmopolitan distribution of mixopterids and possibly other groups of eurypterids,” he added.
Previously, another large ancient sea scorpion that had been discovered was Jaekelopterus rhenaniae. Back in 2007 Science Daily reported that this ancient animal during its lifetime was two and a half meters long, much taller than the average human. The findings from the 390-year-old rock show that spiders, insects, crabs and other similar creatures in the past were much larger than previously thought.
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