Let's All Be Thankful This Human-Size Lobster-Thing Is Extinct

Though maybe it would be quite nice with garlic butter...

Scientists have discovered a new fossil belonging to a group of giant marine creatures known as anomalocaridids.

dx.doi.org / Peter Van Roy / Allison C. Daley / Derek E. G. Briggs

This kind of lobster-like monster could grow to more than two metres long, and ate by filtering plankton and other small marine creatures from the sea.

Don't worry though, you aren't likely to find this thing floating past your cruise liner any time soon, as it lived between 443 and 485 million years ago.

dx.doi.org / Peter Van Roy / Allison C. Daley / Derek E. G. Briggs

This guy was in his prime in the Ordovician period, which is 200 million years before dinosaurs even showed up on the scene. When anomalocaridids were around, plants that grow on land were the latest modern thing.

This important fossil has given scientists new insights into the structure of this giant and how they might have lived.

dx.doi.org / Peter Van Roy / Allison C. Daley / Derek E. G. Briggs

Yeah it just looks like a rock to me too, but it actually gives further proof that anomalocaridids are probably the largest arthropods that have ever exsisted, and offers valuable information about the evolution of spiders, insects, and crustaceans.