The species lived about 467 million years ago

Sep 1, 2015 17:57 GMT  ·  By

A study published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology this September 1 describes a previously undocumented scary-looking sea scorpion that lived 467 million years ago and that fossil evidence indicates could grow to be the size of a human. 

Perfectly understandable, given its terrifying anatomy and its sheer size, the sea scorpion was named by researchers after an ancient Greek warship. Thus, the species is now known as Pentecopterus, after the ancient Greek galley the penteconter.

Pentecopterus was a fierce predator

Paleontologists describe Pentecopterus as having a narrow body fitted with fairly large limbs, which the creature most likely used to catch and trap its prey. As for its head, it too was elongated and came complete with a shield.

As noted, this long-lost sea scorpion could grow to be about the size of a human. Not to prolong the suspense, fossil evidence indicates that, when reaching maturity, it measured about 6 feet (1.8 meters) from one end to the other.

Researchers say the species lived in fairly shallow, brackish waters. In fact, the species was discovered based on fossilized remains recovered from the bottom of a meteorite impact crater estimated to be around 470 million years old.

“The undisturbed, oxygen-poor bottom waters within the meteorite crater led to the fossils’ remarkable preservation,” University of Iowa researcher Huaibao Liu said in a statement.

The creature is an ancestor of modern spiders

Based on its anatomical particularities, researchers classified the newly discovered Pentecopterus as a eurypterid, which is a group of aquatic arthropods considered the forefathers of modern spiders, ticks and lobsters.

The discovery of this previously unknown sea scorpion species pushes the emergence of eurypterids back a few million years, paleontologists say.

As explained by Yale University researcher James Lamsdell, “This shows that eurypterids evolved some 10 million years earlier than we thought and the relationship of the new animal to other eurypterids shows that they must have been very diverse during this early time of their evolution.”

A Greek penteconter
A Greek penteconter

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Artist's rendering of the newly discovered Pentecopterus
A Greek penteconter
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