Researchers have found fossils of a giant scorpion-like animal that used to roam the seas hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs. The species has been named Pentecopterus decorahenis. The first word because it looks like early Greek warships ‘penteconters’ and the latter word is a reference to Decorah, Iowa, near where the fossils were found.

The species, which is the earliest known of an extinct group of animals called eurypterids, has lived around 450 million years ago. Though majority of eurypterids of that time were quite small like around two inches, it was not small as could grow up to 6 feet long.

The species was having big spines on its front limbs that it used to catch its prey. The animal also had paddle-like feature on its rear that helped it swim through water. As a part of the research, a team being led by James Lamsdell of Yale University has looked into more than 150 fossil fragments of at least 30 individuals.

Pentecopterus was not a vertebrate and was not having bones. Lamsdell said, “We could see how the legs are articulated with each other, and how it would have moved. We see lots of insertion points for hairs, which can tell us how it saw its outside environment”. The fossils were found in 2010 during an excavation.