2.5m Water Scorpion Stalks Southern Africa 173
MeredihtJT writes: "The giant water scorpion well over two metres long made its way slowly over the sea floor, about 100m to 200m below the surface of the water. It would take another 260 million years for South African Palaentologist, geologist and 'pizza-maker' Roger Smith to find it."
You can smoke 'em though (Score:2)
Re:Can I have one? (Score:1)
Bwhahaha! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bwhahaha! (Score:1, Funny)
Beowulf? (Score:1)
nightmarish (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Metric System (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Metric System (Score:2)
Man, this has to be the most misleading headline in the history of slashdot, and thats saying something!
first I thought "Wow, they found 2.5m scorpians under water near africa?cool"
then I find out it was 260million years ago.
then I find out its 2.5mm not 2.5m(~9ft).
boy, this story got boring in a hurry.
Re:Metric System (Score:1)
I don't know about you, but they taught us both, metric and english, in school. Of course they spent more time on the english system, probably because it's so confusing. 8 fluid ounces in a cup, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile. 16 oz. in a pound, 2000 lb. in a ton. And don't forget that water freezes at 32 F and boils at 212 F.
And if that wasn't enough, the teachers would torture us with problems like, how many inches in 1/3 mile. Or how many fluid ounces in 10 gallons. Or how many pounds is 125 oz. And no calculators were allowed. Maybe that is why there are so many lunatics out there. Their brains have been fried by the British Engineering System.
Re:Metric System (Score:1)
Ummmmm (Score:3, Funny)
2.5m Water Scorpion Stalks Southern Africa
Tabloid headlines indeed
All I can say is: Where can I get mine?
Re:Ummmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Almost as good as that one from this morning about Taco getting married. I mean, who believes this stuff?
Re:Ummmmm (Score:2)
1: It was a scorpion (OK, so can you not tell one kind of tracks from another in the mud or snow?)
2:How long ago it lived: This is done through dating the rock layer in which the tracks were found. These methodologies are well established and include comparison to other rock laters, isotope analysis, and other methods.
3: Living conditions from fossils can be relatively easily doscovered because one can look at other fosilized remains in the rock-bed. Also some kinds of rock only form from certain conditions (like under water).
4: What it was eating? OK. Again look at the other fossils in the surrounding rocks.
This is NOT rocket science. It's not even computer science
African Swallows (Score:1, Funny)
African or European? (Score:1)
not a predator (Score:1)
If this thing doesn't have a stinging tail and all the stuff that its terrestrial counterparts have, I wonder what it would look like. A big hard-shelled manatee lumbering along through the deep?
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
Re:not a predator (Score:1)
Re:not a predator (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:4, Funny)
This one is already gone, apparently.
(Congratulations, Taco.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
CmdrTaco and CmdrTacoette, run while you can!
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
(or it might just be my cruddy screen that makes it look interlaced. ^_^ )
Parasite Fossil Trails Found (Score:2, Funny)
Humans were tricked into making copies of the box-like plastic and metal parasites and brought the parasites into their dwellings for their usefulness and entertainment. The parasites proliferated, began making copies of themselves, and eventually became the dominant organism on Earth.
Speculation as to the cause of extinction. . . (Score:3, Funny)
KFG
Read the Article? (Score:3, Informative)
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
In reality, all they found were trace fossils of its footprints, because it walked the area 260 million years ago.
In any case, I keep envisioning a bad, B-movie horror flick starring this dude. "Giant Scorpions Attack!", with sequels taking place in different major US cities. I'd almost say I would want to see Samuel L. Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the movie every time he's about to unleash his genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I doubt he'd do a B flick.
I wonder if getting stung by a 3 meter scorpion would provide time to be painful. Probably 20-30 seconds or so.
Re:Read the Article? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe The Scorpion King
Re:Read the Article? (Score:1)
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
Hey, that's the best (or at least most effective) kind of headline, one that grabs your attention and makes you read the article, even if it isn't as good as what you thought.
Nonetheless, the image of a prehistoric water scorpion over eight feet long is not too much of a disappointment to me.
-me
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, he did do Episode I...
From the Garson-Means-Boy dept. (Score:1)
"you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means"
Re:From the Garson-Means-Boy dept. (Score:1)
Re:Read the Article? (Score:1)
We just got the story, and what we have read speaks for itself. South Africa has apparently been taken over...conquered, if you will, by a master race of giant scorpions.
It is difficult to tell at this point whether they will kill the captive South Africans or simply enslave them.
One thing is for certain; there is no stopping them, the scorpions will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I would like to remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I could be helpful in rounding up other to toil in their underground sugar caves.
(later)
Well, this poster was possibly a little hasty earlier, and would like to reaffirm his allegiance to this country, and it's human president. It may not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have......for now....
(takes down a poster saying "SCORPIONS RULE")
(shamelessly ripped from The Simpsons...sorry, I couldnt resist)
Re:Read the Article? (Score:1)
>Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the
>movie every time he's about to unleash his
>genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I
>doubt he'd do a B flick
What do you call "Deep Blue Sea"?
Ewwweeee.
-l
Don't ask me why.... (Score:1)
So, anyone able to see if it's bandwidth between US/Europe and Africa, or just their server?
Re:Don't ask me why.... (Score:2)
Re:Don't ask me why.... (Score:2)
South Africa isn't a third world country, but neither is it fully modernized; a large segment of the population live in abject poverty.
And South Africa does NOT have "the most resources" of any country on Earth. That's just insanely wrong. Good grief, it's not even close.
Re:Don't ask me why.... (Score:1)
They have the most resources? MOST? Just because they have a fair amount of resources doesn't mean they have the MOST in the world. They don't have more than the United States, or China, or Russia. They just don't.
Re:Don't ask me why.... (Score:1)
Re:Don't ask me why.... (Score:1)
Article Text (Score:2, Informative)
February 13 2002 at 05:05PM
By John Yeld
About 260 million years ago, a giant water scorpion well over two metres long made its way slowly over the sea floor, about 100m to 200m below the surface of the water.
This huge, ancient creature may have been making sweeping, brush-like movements with its right feet, collecting small animals like worms and crustaceans from the sediment which it then "combed" with its left feet, pushing the most desirable prey items towards its mouth.
As the water scorpion, or eurypterid as its now known to palaeontologists, moved across the sea bottom, it left complex footprints or tracks of its activity in the mud.
Gradually, the mud was covered by more and more layers of sediment and the thick ash of hundreds of massive volcanic eruptions.
The find is of major scientific significance
Eventually, over aeons, the sea itself disappeared, and the land which had surrounded it broke and divided into new continents which drifted apart.
Millions of years later, while travelling with a group of friends towards the end of November last year, Cape Town-based British palaeontologist John Almond glanced up at a crumbling cliff near Laingsburg in the Karoo and noticed a double set of strange blob-like markings in the rock, starkly outlined in the cross-light of the late afternoon sun.
Miraculously, the blobs were the tracks left by the water scorpion, perfectly preserved as fossilised rock despite the passing of millions of years and the huge re-arrangement of Earth's surface involving massive geological forces like volcanoes and earthquakes.
The find is of major scientific significance, because it is the largest invertebrate trackway known in the world, and the eurypterid which made it is the largest arthropod ever recorded.
(Invertebrates are animals without a backbone. Arthropods are invertebrates with a segmented exoskeleton and numerous paired, jointed appendages, or legs, and include modern crustaceans, insects, spiders and their relatives).
'Probably about 2,5m long'
The new discovery is also a rare example of a trace fossil - that is, fossilised behaviour of living organism such as tracks, trails, burrows or feeding marks, which can be confidently attributed to a specific group of animals.
"Most trace fossils cannot be assigned to particular animal, though we can interpret them in terms of what behaviour was involved," said Almond.
"Trace fossils record the activity of animals while they were still alive and where they actually lived. Body fossils - shells, skeletons and so on - represent dead organisms, and may be transported away from the habitat of the living animal."
The trackway occurs in what geologists call the Ecca Group of sediments of the Great Karoo.
These sediments were laid down in an extensive sea which covered large areas of what was then the supercontinent Pangaea - a single continent comprising all the land mass on Earth - for about 25 million years during the early- to mid-Permian Period (around 280-to-255 million years ago).
"At this time, southern Africa was situated about 50-70 degrees south of the contemporary equator," Almond said.
Geochemical evidence suggests that when the new trackway was formed, the Ecca seas ranged from brackish to freshwater, and the climate was cold to temperate and highly seasonal.
The Laingsburg area is well-known to geologists and palaeontologists, and is often visited to study the Ecca Group of ancient marine sediments.
So it's something of a paradox that so many knowledgeable people have been through the exact area without noticing the trackway before, said Almond.
"However, on this occasion, by pure chance - the right time of day, the right season of the year - the late afternoon sunlight on the beds of rock was at just the right angle to highlight a clear double series of large blobs on a bedding plane high up on a cliff-like outcrop.
"Although we were in a hurry to move on, a quick look through binoculars convinced me the suspicious-looking blobs would be worth a closer look.
"My first impression was that they were very complex impressions of some sort which appeared to form some fossil trackway.
"But, if so, it was clearly not made by a tetrapod - a four-legged vertebrate - and it was huge!"
It was only later when the photographs were developed that Almond realised his find was of exceptional scientific interest and that it should be studied further as soon as possible.
When he and friends revisited the area shortly after Christmas, they found incontrovertible evidence that the traces were a fossil trackway that extended much further than previously realised.
Almond explained that eurypterids are a fascinating group of extinct aquatic arthropods from the Palaeozoic Era, which lived some 480 to 260 million years ago.
"In particular, eurypterids are close relatives, and direct ancestors, of the living and almost exclusively terrestrial arachnids: scorpions, spiders and their kin.
"Like these, eurypterids were almost exclusively predatory in habits, feeding on living prey such as other arthropods, soft-bodied invertebrates, and fish.
"The front appendages were often specialised as huge grasping claws or pincers, or bore cage-like arrays of spines for capturing prey.
"In at least some forms, there may have been a venomous sting at the tip of the tail."
This spectacular trackway, which consists of two parallel series of complex footprints or tracks, is about one metre wide and extends at least 7m across the surface of a single bed.
"The eurypterid which made it must have been enormous, probably about 2,5m long, but there is good reason to think that it was not a fearsome predator like many of its smaller terrestrial and aquatic relatives," said Almond.
Well-preserved details of the newly discovered tracks show that while the animal was walking along the sea bed, it raked through the soft bottom muds, almost certainly foraging for food - probably small worms and crustaceans - using specialised comb-like structures on its limbs.
These combs are preserved in a much older giant eurypterid specimen collected near Prince Albert in the 1980s.
The Laingsburg trackway is unusually well-preserved.
"The excellent preservation of details of the eurypterid tracks is probably due to the fact that they were impressed by the limbs into a viscous muddy substrate through a thin overlying layer of volcanic ash," said Almond.
"The tracks were then infilled from above by ash as soon as the animal walked on.
"The ash layer subsequently protected the foot prints in the underlying muddy layer from erosion because the latter was no longer exposed at the surface of the sea bed."
The Ecca trackway is more complex and interesting than all those previously found in that it was formed by a combination of both locomotion and feeding activities, he said.
Before the trackway can be properly studied scientifically, the priority is to stabilise and cast the specimen in the field.
"The bed on which the trace fossil is preserved is cracking up into numerous small blocks of rock and is in danger of disintegrating through erosion, with the resulting loss of this unique specimen," said Almond.
"There's a fair chance that some of it will be gone after just one more winter."
A cast is being made this week with the assistance of staff of Iziko-SA Museum.
"Thereafter, ways of permanently preserving the specimen for posterity will have to be seriously considered."
Re:Article Text (Score:2)
I thought there was a practical upper limit to the size of creatures with exoskeletons? Something about the weight becoming too great.
...searching Google... Here [google.com] it is:
I also thought that modern crustaceans were near that limit. If so, isn't this bigger than that?
Milalwi
exoskeleton limit (Score:1)
http://www.vlewis.net/page2a.html
the giant spider crab apparently has been 3.7m.
Re:Article Text (Score:1)
Re:Article Text (Score:1)
A few million years of corporate downsizing and committee meetings could easily account for the noted loss of maximum exoskeleton size...
Re:Article Text (Score:1)
OT...Re:Article Text (Score:1)
Eurypterid Park (Score:3, Funny)
--
Damn the Emperor!
Another Slashdot sellout? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Another page (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another page (Score:3, Informative)
Nastyness is relative (Score:2)
Re:Another page (Score:4, Funny)
I found this interesting artist's impression [scanartcentral.net] of how the giant fossil creature may have looked.
Dummie! (Score:2)
No, you can't have one (Score:5, Informative)
260 Million years is long enough for every carbon atom in a piece of bone several feet thick to exchange for silicon. Time(absolute) =~ 20,000 Million yrs.; we're talking about 1% of the age of the universe here, guys. It is a very, very long time.
So, even if you did recover something that looked like a biological molecule from a sample of this thing, all of the information content would have been destroyed long, long ago.
Scorpion growth factors, on the other hand, are well understood. In a strict sense, genetically modified scorpions are more like a modern scorpion that the one in the article. However, they are nearly as cool, they give you some idea of how such a creature may have lived, and you can feed fools to them when they've foiled your plans for the last time.
So, if anyone wants an eight foot long scorpion, I've started making them and I - Get away! No, no, I am your master! Aieeeee!
Anyway, this critter is weird but it pales in comparison to the real freaky shit in the burgess shale. [ucalgary.ca] If you want to know what body types evolution has abandoned (but might take up elsewhere in the galaxy?) check this out. It is a must read for anyone with an interest in writing 'hard' science fiction with aliens in it.
"Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to carve 'aarrggh'. He'd just say it!" - King Arthur Pendragon
Re:No, you can't have one (Score:1)
Eurypterids started to rise to dominance during the Ordovican Period (Burgess Shale formation is Cambrian which was before the Ordovician) and peaked during the Silurian Period (next Period). The initial eurypterids were rather small. By the time of the Permian, they had grown in size by one or two orders in magnitude.
Eurypterids disappeared at the Permian extinction. Then came the Mesozoic, and the dinos.
It is more educational to look at the evolution of some of these Burgess Shale critters after the Cambrian; check out triobites. Additionally, the body shapes of the critter are not that unusual as many have modern day analogs.
Re:No, you can't have one (Score:2)
Over the course of 260 million years, all information content in the DNA would be lost; there might (if it were preserved in Amber, and not in something silicous) be things in the sample that looked like DNA, however, in a process very similar to what happens to old magnetic storage media (random bit flips eventually destroy the data) random chemical changes in the DNA would, absolutely and under any circumstance short of a vacuum at 2 Kelvin, have eroded or altered enough of the bases (after 260 million years, all of them) that recovering any information about the original sequence would be impossible.
burgess shale is right outta "Wierd Tales" (Score:1)
Re:No, you can't have one (Score:1)
IIRC, the source for this info was a PBS documentary disucssing common formations of body styles (segments, legs, heads, etc.).
Clearly this doesn't discount all of the work, but just something to keep in mind.
I can see Spielbergs mouth watering already (Score:1, Redundant)
suggestion to avoid slashdotting these poor sites (Score:2)
Re:suggestion to avoid slashdotting these poor sit (Score:3, Interesting)
...nor would slashdot...
Seriously, the expansion of the pipe and the server farm needed to accomodate the mirroring of all of the links posted in stories would pretty quickly ruin OSDN (who own and fund
Re:suggestion to avoid slashdotting these poor sit (Score:1)
/.
I bet it would be the greatest karma whore of all
time.
I don't understand (Score:5, Interesting)
They talk about finding the fossil and how it means there was a giant scorpion, but not once does it say why they beleive that these trails were left by some giant scorpion. Why do these two long blobs automatically belong to a giant scorpion? Did they find a fossil? Was there some semblance between these footprints and a common day scorpion? They find an impression of a giant tail? I see absolutely 0 in any way tieing the footprints to a scorpion.
Don't worry; they do. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, I'm not being a smart-ass. Have you ever watched a documentary on these people? They're incredible. They'll be at some site, and the paleontologist will come across what looks like a tiny white rock stuck in the ground, and he'll exclaim "Wow! It looks like the pelvis of a juvenile stegosaurous!" And you say "How the hell does he know that?" and then they dig up the fossile, and what do you know... Juvenile stegosaur. Sometimes they actually explain how they figure this stuff out... And while the conclusion seemed odd at the time, by the time they're done explaining, you're sorry you ever doubted them because they're god-damn smart. Frankly, I have no trouble believing that this guy recognized the tracks of an ancient scorpion on sight.
Though to more directly answer your question -- I'm sure this isn't the -very first- evidence of ancient, giant scorpions they've found. So basically, they're going off what they already know, and this fossil expands that knowledge.
You should watch more Discovery Channel. It's the best thing on TV.
Re:Don't worry; they do. (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but with the blatant guessing they presented as fact there...wow. The show looked like it might be interesting at first, but then I just decided to go rent Land Before Time. It's free at Family Video, (hey, it's a kiddie movie), and I can rewind it if I miss something. (This was all before I got my TiVo, of course.) =)
"Millions of years" Myopia (Score:1, Troll)
Miraculously, the blobs were the tracks left by the water scorpion, perfectly preserved as fossilised rock despite the passing of millions of years and the huge re-arrangement of Earth's surface involving massive geological forces like volcanoes and earthquakes.
Noooooo, perfectly preserved because they were made only a few thousand years ago. Perfectly preserved because powerful currents from a giant flood of biblical proportions dumped a pile of sediment on them before they could lose their shape. The process of fossilization occurs rapidly [dinosauria.com] and has been observed both in the laboratory and in nature. (The motto of the linked site is: Your window into the Mesozoic. Can you see the incredible, widespread myopia of our culture?) It begins within months and is usually complete in a number of years (usually less then ten) depending on the environment. This is widely known and documented fact, not theory.
More breathless myopic statements:
Article by Jame E. Francis. "Arctic Eden," Natural History, January 1991, p.57 and 60:
"The remains of lush forests near the North Pole give a glimpse of the Arctic's subtropical past....Despite the passage of 45 million years, the wood retains its original color and is still flexible and burns easily. I quickly discovered that my geologic hammer was useless for collecting samples of the fossil wood; the next season I came better prepared with wood saws."
How do you think a magnolia leaf would change as the result of having been buried for 17-20 million years? Consider this remark from Nature, V.344, April 12, 1990, p. 587:
"When rocks containing these fossils are cleaved open, the freshly exposed leaf tissues are often bright green or 'deep autumnal' in colour, though they rapidly curl away from the substrate as they oxidize and dry out."
The author says that it was even possible to isolate the DNA of the leaves:
"But even the most optimistic estimate of the longevity of this molecule would not have predicted that fragments of substantial length would survive after tens of millions of years at the bottom of an ancient lake." (p. 587)
The Discovery Channel needs to have the same disclaimer that Miss Cleo has. For entertainment purposes only.
Re:"Millions of years" Myopia (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Don't worry; they do. (Score:1)
You see, when you devote your life to digging up little pieces of old stuff, it's fairly natural to find yourself saying really silly things from time to time. Fortunately, 99% of all people are too lost in the mumbo-jumbo big words they use to really pay attention to how absolutely inane the things they're saying are.
Next thing you know, we're teaching to our children as law a theory which has only the weakest of circumstantial evidence, mostly made up by people who have spent their lives looking at little pieces of stone and claiming that it's really a stegasaurus.
Oh gawd, not another creationist moron... (Score:1)
Re:Don't worry; they do. (Score:1)
I agree! Anyone who "knows their stuff" has no problem knowing what they see.
Here's my example.
I'm climbing through this cave with some friends near Cave City, CA, and slowly and carefully, downclimbing a 90 foot pit to see an indian skull at the bottom.
We arrived at the bottom of the pit, and while waiting for some stragglers, I decided to have a look around and discovered a tooth. So I hold it up to my caver/dentist buddy and say "look what I found."
He grabs it out of my fingers, looks at it for a few seconds, while twisting it, looking at all sides, and announces, "It's a lower left bicusped from a female between the ages of 13 to 16.".
We were all blown away by the sureness of his identification, but we knew he was right, even though he didn't know WHY we were all excited by his announcement.
You see, earlier in the day, before our dentist buddy was around, the cave owner whom I'm aquainted with, told us that when he bought the land, that along with it came an indian legend about a indian maiden who hadn't found a mate, so she went into this cave in search of the "marriage" spirit that supposedly dwelled there.
Well, she was never heard from again. My friend started to do a systematic search of his cave, and found an ancient skull and other human remains in the mud at the bottom of the 90 foot pit.
Then he invited some archaeologists from some college (can't remember which) and they identified the skull as belonging to a girl/woman between 13 and 20 years old! The skull dated to about 900 years ago. But the dentist didn't know any of this this, so he was the man of the hour that day.
People that know their stuff are fun to learn from.
Re:I don't understand (Score:1)
"eurypterids are close relatives, and direct ancestors, of the living and almost exclusively terrestrial arachnids: scorpions, spiders and their kin."
Did they find a fossil? Yes. They found the eurypterid's foot and claw prints.
fossil: noun
1 : a remnant, impression, or trace of an organism of past geologic ages that has been preserved in the earth's crust
Also; "These combs are preserved in a much older giant eurypterid specimen collected near Prince Albert in the 1980s."
How many? (Score:3, Funny)
...or maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe it's simpler than than. Imagine yourself 250m years ago. Your a sea roach. On valentines day. Alone
Valentine "Toys".
pushing the most desirable prey items towards its mouth.
Well, maybe not that alone.
pizza maker? (Score:3, Funny)
Cool (Score:1)
Right handed/left handed? (Score:2)
What's interesting is that scorpions are built pretty symetrically [si.edu], like humans (at least externally - the internal organs that we only have one of are all over the place). I wonder if all the creatures were "right sweepers", or were they mostly "right sweepers" (as 90% of people are right-handed), or if it's a 50-50 toss up (like in lobsters).
Check out a quote from this site [orst.edu]:
Sure wish I had one of these guys to study and play with, not just their tracks! (ok, maybe not play ball with, but you get the idea)
I just registered the domain (Score:1)
Ohio eurypterids (Score:1)
BTW. A headline that states "... stalks South Africa" rather than "... stalked South Africa" is really cheap shit.
Roger Smith? (Score:1)
King Crab (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:King Crab (Score:1)
so? they never do leave the water.
Re:King Crab (Score:1, Interesting)
Big O? (Score:2)
Want to see one? (Score:2, Informative)
Still, it scares the hell out of me every time I go there, imagining that thing coming clicking out of the ocean at me.
Is it... (Score:2, Funny)
Folks, it wasn't a scorpion (Score:1)
Exo-Weight limit (Score:1)
Crabs often crawl up on the beach, out of the water. Obviously, the size limit is proportional to the weight, but in this case, the weight is proportional to this creatures weight and buoyancy. The underwater exoskeleton weight limit would be much larger than the one for today's creatures that come out of the water.
hmm.... (Score:2)
Paleontology is soooo subjective (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, that COULD have been what was going on. Or maybe there had just been a HUGE party because five or so of the 30-foot variety scorpions had killed a herd of mega-ichthyosaur and they were making the LITTLE guy sweep up!