Earth scientist Neil Davies and a group of his PhD students stumbled upon a fossil revealed by a cracked boulder in 2018 in Northumberland, UK. A thorough study of the fossil reveals it to be that of a millipede, or rather, one segment of a millipede, and the fossil was three feet long! The millipede of the Arthropleura genus lived between 295 and 345 million years ago. At that time, what is now England was much closer to the equator. The animal that once inhabited the fossil, which is believed to have been a carapace that was shed during its lifetime, was 2.7 meters (8.85 feet) long and weighed about 50 kilograms (110 pounds). This fossil is not the only giant millipede found in England, but now it's the largest. In fact, it sets a new record for the largest arthropod ever found.
The discovery throws a wrench in one theory about why huge animals developed. It was previously thought that giant-sized creatures were the result of an abundance of oxygen, yet this species of millipede reached its huge size long before the rise in oxygen levels. Read more about this discovery at NPR. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Neil Davies/Sarah Collins)
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