Photo credit: Science.org
Hundreds of millions of years ago an ancient predator — the sea scorpion — roamed freshwater and marine habitats on Earth. A recent journal publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society B, co-authored by Associate Professor of Paleobiology James Lamsdell, finds these Paleozoic creatures at the center of a big scientific mystery.
Lamsdell’s article published on July 31, 2024, inspects giantism in sea scorpions. These creatures are part of a classification of arthropods known as eurypterids. These once-mighty predators are of particular interest to researchers because of their evolution in size — they could grow to be over 2-meters long.
While these creatures have long been extinct, their relatives, like horseshoe crabs, scorpions and spiders, still exist today.
Included in the study is an analysis of datasets monitoring ancient habitats, levels of dissolved oxygen and sea surface temperatures. Using 138 eurypterid species, the researchers discovered that giantism in these creatures happened rapidly and, in some cases, amongst relatives much smaller in size. They determined this increase in size was not necessarily caused by environmental factors. Rather, this rapid growth may be attributed to the traits of the species — genome size or reproduction, for example.
While the study does not provide conclusive evidence for what caused such growth, it has debunked some common theories; water temperature and changes in habitat were pervasive explanations amongst paleontologists.
Lamsdell co-authored the article with Yale researchers Alexander Ruebenstahl, Nicolás Mongiardino Koch and Derek E. G. Briggs.
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, has supported scientific research since 1830. Proceedings B is the flagship biological research journal published by the society. Papers up for consideration have been deemed of “outstanding importance, scientific excellence, originality and interest to a wide spectrum of biologists.”
Duncan Lorimer, professor of physics and astronomy, was selected as a 2024 Fellow of the Royal Society of London for his contributions to pulsar astrophysics and his role in the discovery of fast radio bursts.
Lamsdell operates the James Lamsdell Palaeontology Laboratory at WVU. He was a postdoc at Yale before becoming part of the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences’ faculty in November of 2016. His research has focused on topics including a new species of the Ordovician horseshoe crab Lunataspis, which he wrote about in Geological Magazine, as well as drivers of morphological shifts through phylogenetic palaeoecology.
Lamsdell received his Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of Kansas. He hails from the United Kingdom, where he received his B.Sc. from the University of Birmingham and his M.Sc. from the University of Bristol.
