ANIMALS
Never-before-seen head of a giant ‘millipede’ solves an evolutionary mystery
WORDS SIERRA BOUCHÉR
An illustration of what Arthropleura might have looked like, not including some of the new head characteristics discovered by researchers
The face of a car-sized, millipede-like creature, the largest arthropod ever to live, has finally been revealed thanks to two well-preserved fossils. The arthropod, called Arthropleura, lived in forests near the equator between 346 million and 290 million years ago, during the late Paleozoic era. In the oxygen-rich atmosphere at that time, Arthropleura could grow to a massive 2.6 metres long and weighed over 45 kilograms. “Arthropleura … has been known since the 18th century, over 100 years, and we hadn’t found a complete head,” said Mickaël Lheritier, a palaeontologist at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 in France. “Now, with the completed head, you can see the mandibles and the eyes, and these characteristics can [help us understand] the position of this [creature] in evolution.”