Dr. Richie Howard

So the early Devonian period, when Priarchurus lived, is a strikingly alien landscape.

So I think people are vaguely aware that there were giant arthropods in Earth's deep paleontological past.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

But they lived in the Carboniferous period.

This was 55 million years after...

when Pre-Arcturus lived.

That's a world where there are jungles because trees have evolved.

It's a world where there is a much more complicated, complex landscape in terms of ecology.

In the early Devonian, life has only really just started spreading onto the land.

There's just some gigantic scorpion running around as well.

It's kind of crazy.

It's walking around in between all these sort of primitive moss-like plants and these sort of tall, weird, fungus-y things called Prototaxites.

Basically look a bit like standing stones.

Really, really, really weird landscape this animal lived in.

And of course, to answer the question, how on earth did it sustain itself?

Unless there's loads of other large animals on the land at this point that we just don't have the fossils of, which I think is probably unlikely because how have we just missed?

We've missed all of them.

I think what's more likely is that it was an amphibious animal.

There's much larger prey for it in the water, things like armored fish.

They've been found at some of these sites as well.