A Late Carboniferous fossil scorpion from the Piesberg, near Osnabrück, Germany

The Late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) Coal Measures of Europe and North America have yielded nearly forty accepted scorpion species (Fet et al. 2000); over a third of the known fossil fauna. On the face of it, scorpions would appear to be one of the most diverse groups found within these Coal Measures environments. However, at least some taxa seem to be of questionable validity, having been raised for incomplete specimens and/or material which may have been altered taphonomically. A particular problem is the posthumous monograph of Kjellesvig-Waering (1986). The most wideranging revision of fossil scorpions, it offers a highly typological classification scheme in which numerous species were raised to monotypic genera and families based on reciprocal differences rather than explicit or convincing apomorphies. Important progress towards a more phylogenetic classification has been made (e.g. Jeram 1994a, b), but revision of all fossil scorpions within a cladistic framework remains a major goal towards understanding the early phases of scorpion evolution. Compared to the United States, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic, Carboniferous scorpions from Germany are rather rare. The Early Carboniferous of the Erzgebirge Basin in Saxony has yielded Eoscorpius bornaensis Sterzel, 1918. This widely overlooked name was not picked up in important summaries (Petrunkevitch 1953; Kjellesvig-Waering 1986) or catalogues (Fet et al. 2000), but the holotype – held in the Chemnitz Museum – was mentioned by Nindel (1955) and Brauckmann (1982), and refigured by R ßler & Schneider (1997, fig. 11). It is, however, only known from the ventral surface. Another scorpion was described from the Late Carboniferous Coal Measures of Haltern in Nordrhein-Westphalia; an isolated carapace assigned to Alloscorpius wardingleyi (Woodward 1907) by Brauckmann (1982) and re-assigned to Mazonia wardingleyi by Brauckmann (2005). Here, we describe a new and largely complete specimen of a scorpion from the Coal Measures of the Piesberg, near Osnabr ck in Lower Saxony (Figs 1–2). Its slender and gracile morphology (Figs 3–5) is most reminiscent of the Mazon Creek species Eoscorpius carbonarius Meek & Worthen, 1868, and pending a Fossil Record 11 (1) 2008, 25–32 / DOI 10.1002/mmng.200700010