| Literature DB >> 16319874 |
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.Entities:
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Year: 2005 PMID: 16319874 DOI: 10.1038/438576a
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Nature ISSN: 0028-0836 Impact factor: 49.962