Ancient dog-size sea scorpion unearthed in China

These sea scorpions were called Eurypterids and could even be of the same size as a human. They were apex predators during their time

By Edward Era Barbacena

A team of researchers has discovered a fossil of a scorpion the size of a dog while exploring in the South China Sea. It is believed that the fossil is somewhere between 443 to 419 million years old.

This discovery has been published in Science Bulletin, a renowned journal. In the article, the scorpion’s shape was found printed upon the rocks present in the depths of the sea. Wang Bo, a researcher from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of this study, said that this scorpion was a male and had a thorny moustache present in the front of his body that was most probably used to attract a female.

“Our knowledge of mixopterus is limited to only four species in two genera, which were all based on a few fossil specimens from the Silurian Laurussia 80 years ago," the researchers said in their study. Sea scorpions are known as Mixopteridae and have a large exoskeleton, four strong legs and a bent spine.

The Terropterus xiushanensis used its long and spiked limbs to help capture food as it roamed the sea bed and also had a poison sting on its tail to help it overpower prey.