A giant scorpion that once roamed what is now England and Wales has been confirmed as the largest of its kind ever to exist, thanks to new research led by scientists at the Natural History Museum.
Measuring around a metre in length and armed with pincers over 16 centimetres long, Praearcturus gigas would have been a formidable predator stalking floodplains around 415 million years ago.
Remarkably, the fossils used to identify Praearcturus have been held in the Museum’s collection for more than 150 years. Scientists used modern analytical techniques and comparisons with newly described fossil species to confirm that Praearcturus is definitively a scorpion and a distinct species.
This giant scorpion lived tens of millions of years before other famous “giant” arthropods, reshaping ideas about how and why early arthropods grew so large
Tap the link to learn more about the world’s other largest arthropods
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302484-fossil-of-the-largest-millipede-that-ever-lived-found-on-english-beach/
