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IAM1
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 Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 1:03 pm Post subject: Scientists Find Fossil of Biggest Bug Ever to Have Existed |
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Scientists Find Fossil of Enormous Bug
This is a computer generated image issued by the University of Bristol in England released on Tuesday Nov. 20, 2007 showing a size comparison between a human an ancient sea scorpion. A fossil found in Germany indicates the ancient sea scorpion was once 2.5 metres (8 feet) long, making it the biggest bug ever known to have existed.
Nov 20, 2007
By THOMAS WAGNER
LONDON (AP) - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever.
How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"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," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"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 stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates - backboned animals like ourselves."
That competition ended long ago.
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those."
On the Net: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk |
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evutch
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| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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i would either be extremely bug phobic, or OR, wonder if it tasted like lobster...  |
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dangermite
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| Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 6:43 am Post subject: Re: Scientists Find Fossil of Biggest Bug Ever to Have Exist |
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| IAM1 wrote: |
| He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies. |
I have heard this oxygen argument before about other huge prehistoric insects, such as dragonflies. The oxygen content of todays atmosphere is too sparse to support dragonflies of the sizes found in the fossil record, so they evolved to be smaller as the oxygen content decreased. Very interesting. Interesting to think how evolution will deal with future and present climate change. |
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IAM1
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| Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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| evutch wrote: |
| i would either be extremely bug phobic, or OR, wonder if it tasted like lobster... |
Isn't it weird, or sad that lobster, shrimp, as well as crab are all scavenger bottom feeders? In other words they eat dead things  etc. but they taste so damn good! I wonder what this creature ate back in its day? |
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IAM1
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| Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:45 pm Post subject: Scientists Find Fossil of Biggest Bug Ever to Have Existed |
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| dangermite wrote: |
| IAM1 wrote: |
| He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies. |
I have heard this oxygen argument before about other huge prehistoric insects, such as dragonflies. The oxygen content of todays atmosphere is too sparse to support dragonflies of the sizes found in the fossil record, so they evolved to be smaller as the oxygen content decreased. Very interesting. Interesting to think how evolution will deal with future and present climate change. |
Hey dm! Yes, it's interesting about the correlation between higher oxygen content and species size. However, I find it even more interesting that our present day blue whale is even larger than the largest known land dinosaur, the sauropod "Argentinosaurus", which lived on earth. So I'm inclined to think these animals/species sizes has to correlate with more than just atmospheric oxygen content and an "arms race" between species. I'm thinking food abundance/availability and nutritional content in the food, as well as the environmental factors had a lot to do with the past species existing and evolving etc. But then there's the present day blue whale again, makes you wonder . |
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dangermite
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:18 am Post subject: |
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It also has to do with how insects breath, versus mammals. Insects don't have lungs, they have pores along their thorax, through which gasses are exchanged with the tissue. When oxygen levels were high enough, sufficient O2 levels could be maintained over longer distances through the pores, and when they dropped off, only smaller insects could respire efficiently. Or so they say for the dragonfly.
Blue whales, of course, have lungs which are vastly more efficient for gas exchange. |
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IAM1
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| Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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| dangermite wrote: |
It also has to do with how insects breath, versus mammals. Insects don't have lungs, they have pores along their thorax, through which gasses are exchanged with the tissue. When oxygen levels were high enough, sufficient O2 levels could be maintained over longer distances through the pores, and when they dropped off, only smaller insects could respire efficiently. Or so they say for the dragonfly.
Blue whales, of course, have lungs which are vastly more efficient for gas exchange. |
I'm not dismissing the oxygen theory at all. I'm just thinking that these creatures most likely had a number of factors that influenced/contributed to their large size  . 'Elevated levels of oxygen in the atmosphere may have allowed some prehistoric animals to grow very large, but Braddy points out that oxygen levels during the period in question were not elevated much beyond current levels. A much more likely explanation, he says, is that the sea scorpions needed a competitive advantage over other animals, including other related arthropods.' I imagine during that prehistoric time these anthropods had to compete with several diverse and aggressive sea creatures so, many of them were large in size also.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12941-giant-claw-points-to-monster-sea-scorpion.html
Giant claw points to monster sea scorpion - life - 21 November 2007 - New Scientist |
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dangermite
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 1:07 am Post subject: |
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| This is true. While elevated oxygen levels would have allowed larger anthropods to be viable, there would be no need to grow evolve larger species unless larger size gave some advantage. |
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