Paleontologists discovered a giant fossilized claw that once belonged to an 2.5 meter (8 foot) long sea scorpion. The University of Bristol scientists uncovered the claw near Prum, Germany. It's approximately 400 million years old. From the Associated Press:
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," (paleontologist Simon Braddy) said…Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."
