Wild find: This is what a human-sized sea scorpion looks like

Newly discovered sea scorpions that lived long ago in New South Wales, Australia Phys.org Tell. About 400 million years ago, this group of arthropods lived in aquatic environments. The last species died out more than 250 million years ago during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, the worst wave of extinction in Earth’s history.

The types of new fossil materials discovered so far include Pteridae——Go to the sea scorpion tribe. They lived from the late Silurian to the late Devonian, from at least 444 million years ago to about 393 million years ago, until they became extinct due to environmental changes.

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The largest research Pteridae– Sea scorpions were even as large as adult humans. Not many sea scorpions have been found in what is now Australia, mainly because they had not been studied there before.

The current research material mainly consists of parts of the exoskeleton, that is, the external backbone, and Pterosaur– Species from the genus Jack Long-species from the genus. The latter is the largest known sea scorpion and has previously been found elsewhere on the coast of ancient Gondwana.

Australia was once part of Gondwana, but now the discovery is farther from the other side of Gondwana than some previous discoveries, and scientists have concluded that at least huge Jack Long –Sea scorpions can even swim thousands of kilometers across the ocean.

Gigantism, i.e. huge body size, could be an important factor in being able to travel such long distances. On the other hand, the causality could also be the other way around: the ability to travel made it possible to grow to giant size.

Until now, it has remained a mystery what environmental changes caused the kill. Pteridae-Sea scorpions are heading for extinction. Research on this topic is still ongoing.

A study on a recently discovered sea scorpion has been published Gondwana Studies In research publications.