Giant sea scorpion was likely a lame predator
Posted by staff / July 16, 2014
Pictured above is a eurypterus, a smaller extinct eurypterid related to the giant pterygotid.
A modern-day eye exam calls into question what scientists have long assumed about the extinct giant pterygotid eurypterid, the largest arthropod that ever lived.
Pterygotids, which could grow more than two meters (6.5 feet) long, roamed shoreline basins for 35 million years. Because of their size, the long-toothed grasping claws in front of their mouth, and their forward-facing, compound eyes, scientists believed these sea scorpions were fearsome predators.
“We thought it was this large, swimming predator that dominated Paleozoic seas,” says Ross Anderson, a graduate student at Yale University. “But one thing it would need is to be able to find the prey, to see it. Our analysis shows that they could not see as well as other eurypterids and may have lived in dark or cloudy water.
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: Dimitris Siskopoulos via Wikimedia Commons
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