Brontoscorpio anglicus
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| iBrontoscorpio anglicus |
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Extinct (fossil)
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| Brontoscorpio anglicus |
Brontoscorpio anglicus was a large scorpion, about 1 m (3 feet) in length, that lived underwater during the Silurian period. It was one of the dominant predators of its time, since the arthropods were the largest animals on Earth. On the outside it was almost identical to a modern scorpion (apart from size). Its gills / lungs (book lungs) could work underwater or in air. Book lungs were made up of round tissue stacked on each other like the pages of a book. This allowed the scorpion to crawl out of the water to go from the ocean to lakes, or simply bypass a land barrier that cut off one sea route to another. It did not breathe in like we do, but simply absorbed oxygen directly through pores on the surface of its exoskeleton, and through its lung compartments, as in modern scorpions.
It had a poisonous stinger that, according to Walking with Monsters, was the size of a light bulb.
These creatures were capable of leaving the water for relatively short periods, in part because of a combination of the efficiency of book lungs and the support afforded by its exoskeleton.
As scorpions became more adapted to life on land, their descendants got smaller until they reached their size today.
Marine scorpions such as B. anglicus, ate small sea animals such as fish, and trilobites.
