An artist's impression of Terropterus xiushanensis. (Image credit: Yang Dinghua)
LiveScience has a story about the recent discovery of a Euryperid. Eurypterids were the apex predators of their time. This one, Terropterus xiushanensis, lived about 435 million years ago during the lower Silurian in what is now modern day China. It was described in a paper in the journal Science Bulletin.
Its barbed limbs "were presumably used for prey-capture, and analogies can be drawn with the 'catching basket' formed by the spiny pedipalps of whip spiders … among the arachnids," study co-author Bo Wang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues wrote in the new study. Pedipalps are the front-most appendages of arachnids. Usually dedicated to transferring sperm from male spiders to female mates, in some arachnids, such as whip spiders, pedipalps have become adapted to snatch prey.
The fearsome beastie lived during the Silurian period, between approximately 443.8 million and 419.2 million years ago. At this time, the scorpions would have been the apex predators in their underwater stalking grounds, pouncing on unsuspecting fish and mollusks; scooping them up in their pedipalps; and shoving them into their mouths.
