Megarachne the giant "spider"

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Edge Guerrero
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Megarachne the giant "spider"

Postby Edge Guerrero » Wed Nov 09, 2022 12:55 am

Megarachne (meaning “great spider”) is a genus of freshwater eurypterid from the Carboniferous period of Argentina. It is one of the few eurypterids that is known to live in freshwater. It was originally believed to be a species of giant spider, the largest to ever exist, hence the meaning of its name. However, a reevaluation of the fossil revealed that it was actually a species of sea scorpion.

Fossils of Megarachne have been discovered in deposits of Late Carboniferous age, from the Gzhelian stage, in San Luis, Argentina. The fossils of the single and type species M. servinei have been recovered from deposits that had once been a freshwater environment. The generic name, composed of the Ancient Greek μέγας (megas) meaning "great" and Ancient Greek ἀράχνη (arachne) meaning "spider", translates to "great spider", because the fossil was misidentified as a large prehistoric spider.

With a body length of 54 cm (21 in), Megarachne was a medium-sized eurypterid. If the original identification as a spider had been correct, Megarachne would have been the largest known spider to have ever lived. Eurypterids such as Megarachne are often called "sea scorpions", but the strata in which Megarachne has been found indicates that it dwelled in freshwater and not in marine environments.

Megarachne was similar to other eurypterids within the Mycteropoidea, a rare group known primarily from South Africa and Scotland. The mycteropoids had evolved a specialized method of feeding referred to as sweep-feeding. This involved raking through the substrate of riverbeds in order to capture and eat smaller invertebrates. Despite only two specimens having been recovered, Megarachne represents the most complete eurypterid discovered in Carboniferous deposits in South America so far.[1] Due to their fragmentary fossil record and similarities between the genera, some researchers have hypothesized that Megarachne and two other members of its family, Mycterops and Woodwardopterus, represent different developmental stages of a single genus.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megarachne
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