A question for the entomologists among you. Insects breathe through tracheas and therefore cannot grow larger than 17 centimeters at our current oxygen concentration (says the first article I found on Google).
So my question is whether scorpions are bound in the same or a similar way. Google could not really help me in this regard.
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I don’t know exactly how to answer your question, I couldn’t find much about max size either. But there is an extinct order of sea scorpions called eurypterids, and the largest of them were longer than people are tall.
There’s also the prehistoric land scorpion, called pulmonoscorpius that reached 28 inches long
Scorpions breathe through [book lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_lung), so the mechanism is different, but they still don’t breathe actively, so that limits the gas exchange much like in insects.
Some other arthropods, like crabs, breathe through [branchiostegal lungs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchiostegal_lung), so they can get quite large – the [coconut crab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab) can grow up to 40 cm body length and 1 m leg span.
[Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World – By Nick Lane](https://nick-lane.net/books/oxygen-the-molecule-that-made-the-world/)
During the Carboniferous period, there were giant versions of most creatures. Dragonflies with 75 cm wingspan, scorpions up to a meter long, newts reached 3 meters and ferns grew to 40 meters. Scientists suspect that the oxygen levels in the atmosphere were higher but haven’t yet been able to prove that it effected the size of plants and animals.
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