The massive creature weighed 50 kilograms and measured nearly three metres 😱
Researchers in England have chanced upon the fossil of a giant millipede that used to inhabit Northern England nearly 326 million years ago.
‘It was a complete fluke of a discovery,’ said Dr Neil Davies, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and the lead author of a paper on the fossil.‘The way the boulder had fallen, it had cracked open and perfectly exposed the fossil, which one of our former PhD students happened to spot when walking by,’ said Davies.
‘Finding these giant millipede fossils is rare, because once they died, their bodies tend to disarticulate, so it’s likely that the fossil is a moulted carapace that the animal shed as it grew,’ said Mr Davies. To get to such a large size, researchers think that the Arthropleura must have had a high-nutrient diet made up of nuts and seeds as well as small creatures and amphibians, meaning it hunted smaller invertebrates.
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