in a press release<\/a>. \u201cBut it was a world that could somehow support a giant predator.\u201d<\/p>\nThe scorpion, called Praearcturus gigas, lived during the Early Devonian period. Animals were only just starting to move onto land, large forests had not evolved, with fungi and small plants only recently colonizing land. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we think of giant arthropods, people often picture Carboniferous rainforests with giant millipedes or dragonfly-like insects from later in Earth\u2019s history,\u201d Richard Howard, lead study author and curator of London\u2019s natural history museum, said in the press release. \u201cBut Praearcturus lived at least 50 million years earlier, well before the evolution of trees, when life on land was only just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study suggests the scorpion was an apex predator and partially aquatic, likely moving between floodplains and fresh water. The scorpion was likely able to grow so large due to a lack of competing apex predators. The lands were still new and the scorpion had nothing to fear, allowing it to grow to a tremendous size. <\/p>\n
\u201cGigantism in Early Devonian scorpions may have had distinct evolutionary drivers, being potentially the first group to occupy the niche of a large terrestrial predator,\u201d according to the study. <\/p>\n
Greg Edgecombe, a co-author of the study and a researcher at London\u2019s natural history museum, said the fossil shows how animals adapted to life on land. He suggested that this particular branch of scorpion evolution \u201cmay even represent a lineage that returned to the water after earlier ancestors had already begun living on land.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scorpion was first described in 1871, but was thought to be a crustacean, rather than an arachnid. Recent discoveries confirmed that it was a scorpion. <\/p>\n
Howard praised modern research techniques that were able to reshape scientific understanding of the animal. Garwood shared the sentiment, saying \u201cBy bringing together material from several collections and using cutting edge imaging techniques, we\u2019ve been able to build a clearer picture of the animal than was previously possible, which is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mega scorpion with claws the size of dinner knives and a body the size of a dog…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[712,49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-721808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}