Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis

Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis is an extinct Gondwanan scorpion that lived 360 million years ago in the Devonian. Its fossil remains, clearly showing pincer and sting, were discovered in rocks of the Witteberg Group near Grahamstown in South Africa. At present, this scorpion is the oldest known land-dwelling animal from Gondwana, which in Devonian times was separated from Laurasia by a deep ocean. At the time, the fossil site was only 15° from the South Pole, but rather than arctic-like tundra, the region was probably wooded, providing ample insect life for food. Previously, only two scorpion species were known from the late Devonian – Hubeiscorpio gracilitarsus from China and Petaloscorpio bureaui from Canada. The species was described by Robert Gess of Wits University in the journal African Invertebrates. The specific epithet derives from umZantsi, the isiXhosa word for "south", sometimes used for South Africa.

Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis

Robert Gess · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
GondwanascorpioPBDB
Life habit
solitaryPBDB, for Arachnida
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arachnida
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Arachnida

Time the record covers

At most 14 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 372.15 Mya and 358.86 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Devonian — about 1 of 1 occurrenceDevonianCarboniferous — about 0 of 1 occurrence372–372 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences372–371 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences371–371 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences371–370 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences370–370 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences370–369 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences369–369 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences369–368 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences368–368 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences368–367 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences367–367 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences367–366 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences366–366 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences366–366 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences366–365 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences365–365 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences365–364 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences364–364 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences364–363 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences363–363 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences363–362 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences362–362 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences362–361 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences361–361 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences361–360 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences360–360 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences360–359 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences359–359 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences372.6 Mya358.4 Mya

1 occurrence of Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis on record, most of them in the Devonian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

Witpoort — 33.32°S, 26.54°E

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The named rock units Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis and its relatives

Devonian

Where Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

22 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis

Credit
Robert Gess
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Gondwanascorpio emzantsiensis was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itGondwanascorpio through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gess 2013