A new scorpion species found fossilized in the rocks of a backyard could turn the scientific understanding of these stinging creatures on its head.
The fossils suggest that ancient scorpions crawled out of the seas and onto land earlier than thought, according to the researchers who analyzed them. In fact, some of the oldest scorpions had the equipment needed to walk out of their watery habitats and onto land, the researchers said. The fossils date back some 430 million to 433 million years, which makes them only slightly younger than the oldest known scorpions, which lived between 433 million and 438 million years ago.
The new species "is really important, because the combination of its features don't appear in any other known scorpion," said study leader Janet Waddington, an assistant curator of paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
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