A gigantic fossil arthropod trackway

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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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The true identity of the supposed giant fossil spider Megarachne

Mario A. Hünicken, José Corronca, Paul Selden (2005)

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I.—Further Observations on the Scottish Carboniferous Eurypterids

Charles Waterston (1968)

A series of specimens from the Scottish Limestone Coal Group (Lower Namurian) is described, among which occursAdelophthalmuscf.wilsoni(Woodward) from West Lothian, a group of specimens from the No. 2 Ironstone of Loanhead, Midlothian, one of which is recognized as belonging to the new speciesMycterops (?) blairi, and a prosomal appendage from Lanarkshire which is referred to the genusHibbertopterus. New evidence is presented on the nature of the prosomal appendages ofEurypterus (?) stevensoniR. Etheridge jr. which is designated the type species of the new genusDunsopterus. The Coal Measures speciesGlyptoscorpius minutisculptusPeach is recognized as an eurypterid for which the new genusVernonopterusis created. The systematics of these and other late palaeozoic genera which have been included by Kjellesvig-Waering (1966) in the families Woodwardopteridae and Hibbertopteridae are discussed.