A gigantic fossil arthropod trackway
Open Access
- 30 November 2005
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Springer Nature in Nature
- Vol. 438 (7068) , 576
- https://doi.org/10.1038/438576a
Abstract
A unique, complex trackway has been discovered in Scotland: it was made roughly 330 million years ago by a huge, six-legged water scorpion that was about 1.6 m long and a metre wide. To my knowledge, this is not only the largest terrestrial trackway of a walking arthropod to be found so far, but is also the first record of locomotion on land for a species of Hibbertopterus (Eurypterida). This evidence of lumbering movement indicates that these giant arthropods, now extinct, could survive out of water at a time when the earliest tetrapods were making their transition to the land.Keywords
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