Imagine a world where the ground was dotted with creatures bigger than your wildest nightmares—not roaring beasts, but bugs the size of buses. Long before T. rex roamed the Earth, or birds filled the skies, Earth belonged to massive invertebrates that ruled the swamps and forests. These weren't your garden-variety creepy-crawlies; they were armored giants, living in steamy woodlands near ancient coasts. In 2018, scientists found a fossil chunk tumbling from a cliff, which gave a new perspective on things we can barely even imagine: millipedes out-sizing anything slithering today.
The Monster Millipede That Roamed the Earth 326 Million Years Ago
Scientists have verified the largest arthropod ever to walk the Earth: a colossal millipede named Arthropleura, revealed through a fossil discovery in northern England. This beast predates dinosaurs by over 100 million years, belonging to the Carboniferous Period around 326 million years ago. Discovered in January 2018 on a Northumberland beach at Howick Bay, the fossil emerged from a fallen sandstone block near a coastal cliff.
The specimen, a 75-centimeter section of articulated exoskeleton, marks only the third Arthropleura fossil known, and it is the biggest and oldest. Experts estimate the full creature stretched about 8.8 feet long and weighed around 50 kilograms, dwarfing even ancient sea scorpions for the invertebrate size record. Why is it so rare, and what was it like?
Rarity and Lifestyle of Arthropleura
“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,” explained lead author Neil Davies of the study published in the Journal of the Geological Society. He is also a researcher at the University of Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. “We have not yet found a fossilized head, so it's difficult to know everything about them,” he said in a statement from the University of Cambridge.
These millipedes stuck to equatorial zones like ancient Great Britain, preferring open coastal woodlands. They roamed for about 45 million years before vanishing. Davies noted uncertainty about their growth spurt, but diet likely helped. “While we can't know for sure what they ate, there were plenty of nutritious nuts and seeds available in the leaf litter at the time, and they may have been predators that fed off other invertebrates and even small vertebrates such as amphibians,” he said.
This car-sized creepy-crawly flips our bug fears, and is proof that Earth once hosted true titans.
