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Quarry Find is a Big, Old Creepy-Crawly

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 November 2007, 12:00 CST

The discovery of an ancient sea scorpion's giant fossilized claw in Germany indicated that, when alive, the scorpion was larger than a man is, scientists said.

The find, in a quarry near Prum, Germany, suggested that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than scientists thought, Science Daily reported.

The claw is from an eurypterid, a sea scorpion that lived between 255 million and 460 million years ago, the discoverers said. It measures 18 inches long, which scientists said its owner was about 8 feet long.

This is an amazing discovery, said Simon Braddy, with the University of Bristol in Britain and one of the discoverers. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies but we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.

The findings were published online in Biology Letters.

Source: United Press International

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