lørdag den 4. december 2010

Giant Sea Scorpion (Extinct)


Good day everyone! Today you will discover one of the biggest arthropods ever to have inhabited our planet. Today’s monster is the extinct giant sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenaniae.


This giant arthropod is arguably the biggest Arthropod ever except maybe for Arthropleura an enormous extinct millipede. It lived 390 million years ago and it is estimated Jaekelopterus grew to be around 2.5 meters long (8.2 feet) long, but I’ve also posted a picture to give a better picture of this sea scorpion’s size! 


Jaekelopterus belongs to the group called sea scorpions but it’s actually a bit misleading name because it is believed to have lived in freshwater swamps, rivers and lakes rather than saltwater. The sea scorpions haven’t appeared in as many movies and games as they deserve. But one show that did some justice to these creatures was Sea Monsters a 3 part Walking with Dinosaurs special hosted by zoologist Nigel Marven, though as far as I can remember only a smaller species appeared in that show.

So guys, what extinct monster would you like to see next? :)

24 kommentarer:

  1. In the first pic it looks like a manta-ray fused with a scorpion. Pretty cool :D

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  2. I think they had them in an episode of "Primeval"?

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  3. thank god that thing is extinct. Its huge!

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  4. Oh, I'm kinda glad those are extinct!

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  5. Wow thats some huge arthropod... it'd be so creepy if I saw it today lol.

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  6. all i need is a Jaekelopterus with a saddle... imagine showing up to a girl's house on a giant scorpion... instant sex

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  7. holy shit i was gonna go to sleep

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  8. cool, 390 million years ago? what was happening then dinosaurs?

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  9. I read about these not that long ago...too freaking cool! Love your blog. =D

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  10. Wow, pretty awesome man, I've never seen that before.

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  11. at first I wasn't sure if this was a mythological creature or an extinct one. It looks like a giant shrimp.

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  12. Yessssssssss. Totally following.

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  13. Extinct monsters...do the Old Ones count as extinct? I would love to see a post on the Cthulu mythos.

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  14. Looks like a trilobite. Anyway, you ever heard about the giant woodpecker? That sure was scary

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  15. woah, wtf - giant sea scorpion? i need more info on this beast. i kinda like its name too - jaekelopeterus. nice.

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  16. good thing it's extinct! wouldn't want to come across that thing while i'm in the water!

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  17. As a kid I used to get nightmares about megafauna like this. Imagine seeing such gigantic things crawling through your garden! Brrrr.

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  18. wow he was big :) very interesting post i loved it

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  19. It boggles the mind that these creatures just milled around some 400 million years ago

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  20. Good thing they are extinct. They look from like another planet.

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  21. That sounds terrifying. Are there any monsters that likely tasted good/great?

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  22. Oh wow, it's sad that a lot interesting creatures are extinct...

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  23. I'd just like to say that I fucking hate bugs.

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