Palaeoecology: a gigantic fossil arthropod trackway |
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Authors: | Whyte Martin A |
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Institution: | Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Brookhill, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. m.a.whyte@sheffield.ac.uk |
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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. |
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