Claws beats Jaws as terror of seas

SCORPIONS inspire fear among many people, despite being small enough to fit on the palm of a hand.

But scientists have now discovered an ancestor of the insect that was once the planet's top predator, a "truly terrifying creature" living in the sea, nearly 12ft long from tail to claw and weighing in at roughly 28st.

An 18in fossilised claw - about 10in longer than the largest of its descendants alive today - was found in Germany. Scaling this up based on more complete remains suggests an animal with a body of up to 259cm (8ft 6in) with the fully extended front limbs adding a further metre (3ft 3in).

Fortunately, for everything else alive 390 million years ago and worth eating, its tail was not equipped with a sting, a later evolutionary development.

While humans may have ultimately had the last laugh, our contemporary ancestors, who were fish, were among its prey.

Dr Simon Braddy, of Bristol University's earth sciences department, said: "This is an amazing discovery. This animal would be truly terrifying creature.

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

"This new evidence suggests their bodies were two-and-a-half metres long. It is possible that somewhere out there, there's an even larger arthropod, maybe up to three metres."

The sea scorpion was at the top of the food chain during its time and would have made a fearsome predator.

"If you were swimming around in a river or the sea and one of these things attacked you, you wouldn't stand a chance," Dr Braddy said.

"I'd rather be in the sea with a 6ft shark than a 6ft sea scorpion. These claws would rip you to pieces."

While this may not be a danger for humans today, it certainly was for the creatures whose descendants went on to make the long journey on to land, into the trees and then out of them.

"At this stage of our own evolution we're still these lobed, finned fish and the sea scorpions would have been eating our own ancestors," said Dr Braddy, who co-authored a paper in the Royal Society's Biology Letters, published today.

"It would also eat other creepy-crawlies including its own kind. There is some evidence they were cannibals."

The scorpion had an armoured exoskeleton, jointed body, a pair of large "paddles", eight walking legs, and two front limbs with the serrated claws.

The fossil claw was discovered in a quarry near Prum in Germany in an area that would have been a swampy delta, where a river entered the sea.

"These really big ones [scorpions] are interesting, you find them in the sea, in rivers and in lakes," Dr Braddy said.

"That implies they were able to swim around between these environments and weren't restricted by freshwater or saltwater."

Markus Poschmann, a colleague of Dr Braddy who works in Germany, described the moment he found the fossil.

"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab," he said.

"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 stabilise it."

Dr Braddy was having a cup of coffee at his computer when he was sent a picture of the claw.

"I was completely amazed the first time I saw it. I almost dropped my coffee. I couldn't believe it was this large, it was very exciting," he said.

ANCIENT MONSTERS

• About 110 million years ago, crocodiles the size of a bus stalked small dinosaurs and fish in the seas. Sarcosuchus imperator or "SuperCroc" was about 40ft long with 6ft jaws and weighed up to 10 tonnes.

• Australia was home to 10ft tall kangaroos until relatively recently. It is thought they were wiped out about 40,000 years ago by humans, although climate change may have played a part. The continent was also home to a wombat-like creature the size of a rhinoceros.

• Megalodon, at 52ft long, was the biggest carnivorous fish the world has ever seen. It is thought to lived between two million and 20 million years ago.

• Fossils of a penguin that stood 5ft tall have been discovered in modern-day Peru. It lived about 36 million years ago and possessed a long "spear-like" beak.

• Tracks of a millipede that was about 6.5ft long were discovered in rock on the island of Arran. Fossilised remains of the creature itself, called Arthropleura, were also discovered in Canada. It walked the earth about 300 million years ago.

• Today's dragonflies are shadows of their prehistoric selves. Meganeura monyi, with a wingspan of 2.5ft, is the world's largest known flying insect. It lived 300 million years ago.