Hibbertopterus
| Hibbertopterus | ||||||||||
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Hibbertopterus scouleri |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||
| Carbon | ||||||||||
| 330 million years | ||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Hibbertopterus | ||||||||||
| Kjellesvig-Waering , 1959 | ||||||||||
Hibbertopterus is a genus of extinct arthropods belonging to the sea scorpions (Eurypterida). The discovery of a unique trace fossil from the Lower Carboniferous and around 330 million years oldin Scotlandis remarkable. This is the oldest and, at 6 m long and 1 m wide, at the same time the largest traces of movement of an arthropod that have been found on land.
According to an imprint accidentally found on the Scottish coast in the Midland Valley in 2005 by Martin Whyte, a geologist from the University of Sheffield , it is believed that the polluter was about 1.60 meters long and one meter wide. This is the largest specimen of a Hibbertopterus that has been found so far.
The nature of the trail clearly shows that it must have originated outside the water. This proves that the sea scorpions, albeit slowly and clumsily, were basically able to move on land. Your chewing apparatus shows a clear adaptation to a diet in water and thus to a purely aquatic way of life. However, the trace fossil of the Hibbertopterus shows that these sea creatures were able to go ashore briefly. The first land vertebrates (Tetrapoda), the early amphibians , lived there in the lower Carboniferous .
