Scientists Discover Scorpions as Big as A Table

Up until now, it has been believed that gigantic scorpions lived only in computer and video games or in comic books with supernatural heroes. Nobody has ever imagined, except perhaps for a nuclear cataclysm, that Earth was at some point populated by scorpions as big as a kitchen table.

And still, Martin Whyte, from the University of Sheffield, Scotland, has discovered tracks of such a water scorpion. If the assumptions will prove correct, this will be the first proof of such a creature.

The six-legged scorpion, called Hibbertopterus, allegedly measured 1.5 meters in length and 1 meter in width, and the tracks covered an area of approximately 6 meters.

According to MSNBC, crescent-shape scarps were left by the outer limbs, inner markings were made by a double-keeled belly, and a central groove was carved by its tail.

"The slow, stilted progression, together with the dragging of the posterior, indicates that the animal was not buoyant and that it was probably moving out of water," Whyte told LiveScience.

The researchers is convinced that no other arthropod would have been able to make those tracks, which also suggested Hibbertopterus might have survived outside water, but not for long.

"Their gills would probably have functioned in air as long as they remained wet," Whyte said.

"I think the animal would certainly have been fearsome in aspect whether you met it in or out of the water," the researcher described it.

However, despite the aspect, evidence shows that the anterior limbs were used to capture small organisms.

It seems that Hibbertopterus, the last of the underwater scorpions, disappeared 250 million years ago.

It is not known if these scorpions had venom as their current descendents, which are renowned for the efficiency of their neurotoxins.