Praearcturus gigas: giant scorpion from Lower Devonian (Lochkovian) of Britain

Just the abstract is the stuff of nightmares:

> Originally described as an isopod in the nineteenth century, and subsequently compared to various arthropod groups, it was re-described with limited illustration as a gigantic scorpion in the 1980s.

“We reopened Pandora’s box”

> Illustrating P. gigas with camera lucida drawings, light photography and tomographic data,

No why would you do this

> and assign several other specimens from the same formation to this taxon,

Nooo

> Several characters supporting a scorpion affinity are present in P. gigas, including large pedipalps with a fixed and movable finger, a stridulatory surface on one of the coxae, and an elongate subtriangular sternum morphology … Uniquely among scorpions, P. gigas has lateral epimera on the mesosomal tergites,

I don’t know what any of that means but it all sounds absolutely horrible

> and combined with the fluvial environment in which the fossils are preserved, we suggest that P. gigas may have been aquatic or amphibious.

OH GOD IT’S UNDER THE WATER

I WILL NEVER GO WILD SWIMMING AGAIN

And in the article the cherry on the cake: it was OR IS from Herefordshire. Where I will shortly be moving.

I'll admit all I really wanted to know what how big this darn this was and I couldn't find it in the paper. I looked it up and it is about three feet/one meter.

"lateral epimera on the mesosomal tergites"

Sideways outerparts on the midbody backparts, I see, I see.

Anyone want to run this paper through an AI to produce some detailed visualizations?

This is where the Gemini "ask about this page" button on Chrome comes handy.

It was about 1 meter long (as another commenter pointed out) and lived around 400 million years ago.