I thought people here might find this interesting! A fossil of a scorpion like creature that was as big as the average human has been found in Germany. Imagine coming face to face with one of these things!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7104421.stm

My wife grew up in Africa. She tells a tale of when she was very young, sitting on her potty and being approached by a scorpion. She lifted her feet up against the wall and called to her mother to come and help. Ma was busy, so Angela had to call repeatedly before Ma came and removed scorpion.

I bet that scorpion looked the size of a house at the time!

That is really an immense beast.

I noticed that the article indicates that the largest living scorpion to be found today is still a largish 30cm (or just under a foot long). That's probably what went after your wife, wild canon!

Kingfisher

I saw this on the news this morning. What I don't understand is how from just a fossilised claw they could be so sure about what the rest of the creature looked like. Or did they find more than just a claw? (and I just missed that part). It seems that recently scientists have been rethinking the size, behaviour and movement of dinosaurs, so is this no more than guesswork and a leap of imagination?

If there are any dinosaur experts out there I really would like to know how they come up with all this sort of information from just a few fossilised bones.

I'm not a dinosaur expert by any stretch of the imagination! But I guess they can make an estimate from the claw size based on animals that are similar today and the body proprotions they have, and also by trying to find the smallest body that would have been able to cope with carrying around two claws this size. If the claws were that heavy, then there must have been something pretty strong carrying it around.

I think a lot of the thinking is educated guesses which the scientists then attempt to prove. You have to be careful of the media though as they often take an unproven theory proposed by a scientist as fact.

No idea how they decided it was that big, but Xeract's theory seems plausible.

Wild Canon, that must of been scary for your wife at the time. It's a strange natural human response to curl up in fear isn't it? When running would have made more sense in that situation.