Giant sea scorpions, some as big as humans, lived 444 million years ago

Paleontologists have made a startling discovery according to which, giant sea scorpions, some as large as an adult human being, once existed on Earth. Researchers from the American Museum of Natural History, the Australian Museum Research Institute, and the WB Clarke Geoscience Center, in Australia, present new evidential data about pterygotid eurypterids from the Silurian and Devonian in New South Wales in their paper published in the journal Gondwana Research.

These giant sea scorpions belonged to a group of arthropods called eurypterids. They lived around 444 million years ago and went extinct mainly due to environmental changes since no evidence of them has been found since 393 million years ago.

The team worked to uncover details about the existence of pterygotids in what is now Australia. Upon studying rock formations in New South Wales, they found evidence that these ancient creatures lived in the region once upon a time.

New sea scorpion species

Two new examples of pterygotid eurypterids - one from the Silurian era and the other from the Devonian era were also found. Notably, the Silurian era was the period 419.2 to 358.9 million years ago, while the Devonian era was 443.8 to 419.2 million years ago.

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Most of the fossils found were of exoskeletons, while one was of a Pterygotus. Jaekelopterus, the largest sea scorpion species, made up the rest of the fossils.

Several fossils have been found around the supercontinent Gondwana in the past. The recent discoveries were nearly identical to the past discoveries made in the area. Researchers say that this means the scorpions navigated and crossed the ocean which would have ideally been thousands of kilometres.

Since these scorpions were extremely huge, they could have played a role in easily crossing the ocean. However, the need to migrate might have played a role in their size as well. These giant scorpions have not been around for millions of years. Changes in the composition of the climate and environment likely killed them all. However, there is no scientific proof available about why they went extinct. Scientists are hoping to uncover the answer soon.