If you think scorpions are scary, just take a look at this guy.

Named Schinderhannes bartelsi, it was found in fossilized form in a German quarry, and dates to 390 million years ago.



That's about 100 million years after the extinction of the last known animal to sport what's technically known as a "great appendage" — a giant claw growing out of its head.

But there it is, right between S. bartelsi's eyes: a great appendage.

If great appendage-bearing creatures survived 100 million years longer than we realized, then maybe they didn't die out.

Maybe they evolved — and come to think of it, scorpion claws look an awful lot like great appendages.

But if scorpions are a sign of ancient times, then S. bartelsi's discovery, announced Thursday in Science, contains an unfortunate sign of our own times: with business slumping, the quarry in which it was found has closed.

Citation: A Great-Appendage Arthropod with a Radial Mouth from the Lower Devonian Hunsrück Slate, Germany." By Gabriele Kühl, Derek E. G. Briggs and Jes Rus. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5915, Feb. 5, 2009.

Images: Science

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