Imagine a scorpion, crawling across the hot desert sand, looking for prey while sand and wind gusts around it. Now imagine that same scene, except instead of an ordinary small scorpion, imagine a humongous, terrifying scorpion the size of a big dog. Scientists have found proof that in an ancient land almost 415 million years ago, this creature would have roamed freely.

Experts at the University of Manchester and the Natural History Museum were re-examining a fossil that had already been discovered 150 years ago. They discovered that this fossil could be the biggest scorpion fossil ever discovered. According to a report by BBC, “the animal, known in Latin as Praearcturus gigas, could have been as big as a dog, with pincers more than 16 centimetres long” (“Ancient giant scorpion was ‘an extraordinary size'”).

Although you may think that the scorpion being only the size of a dog isn’t too big, if you really think about it, your average scorpion is only 2 inches. This creature, however, if comparing to the size of a dog, would be 45 inches long and up to 100 pounds! This scorpion was so big that scientist think that, in its age, there were very few predators that could take it on.

Specialists in the area think that the scorpion got this big mainly because of the area that it lived in. Another reason for the creature’s size could be because it lived or sometimes entered the ocean, where animals were much bigger, leading to more food for the scorpion.

This scorpion is an incredible display of nature, and since the scorpion got to this size during an era where most creatures were quite small.