Yale University
Poor peepers are a problem, even if you are a big, bad sea scorpion.
One minute, you're an imperious predator, scouring the shallow waters for any prey in sight. The next, thanks to a post-extinction eye exam by Yale University scientists, you're reduced to trolling for weaker, soft-bodied animals you stumble upon at night.
Such is the lot of the giant pterygotid eurypterid, the largest arthropod that ever lived. A new paper by Yale paleontologists, published in the journal Biology Letters, dramatically re-interprets the creature's habits, capabilities, and ecological role. The paper is titled "What big eyes you have: The ecological role of giant pterygotid eurypterids."
"We thought it was this large, swimming predator that dominated Paleozoic seas," said Ross Anderson, a Yale graduate student and lead author of the paper. "But one thing it would need is to be able to find the prey, to see it."
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