Millions of years before dinosaurs, there was a creature roaming around that some people might find more terrifying than any tyrannosaur. Picture a millipede, but they weigh more than 100 pounds (45 kg) and have a body the length of a car.
These nightmares have been called Lovecraftian ArthropodsIt is the largest species of arthropod ever known. Fortunately for those who get the willies of curly animals, these 8.5-foot (2.6-meter) creatures, which first appeared 346 million years ago, disappeared about 50 million years later.
These creatures have left behind a puzzle for modern paleontologists to ponder: How closely related were they to their much smaller modern counterparts? While the ancient giants are usually classified as polypods, a group of animals dominated in modern times by millipedes and centipedes, it was not clear exactly where, exactly, they Arthropods Belongs to the family tree. Scientists from several French universities may have found the answer by looking the strange creatures straight in the face.
This was actually quite difficult. Although Arthropods First discovered in 1854, most of the fossils found were fragmentary, and none included a complete head. The record was so patchy, and the creatures were so bizarre, that some paleontologists mistook a neck-like part called a colum for a head. There was no clue as to what ArthropodsIts eyes, antennae and mouth probably already looked like this, so it was difficult for scientists to know if there was a family resemblance to the multi-legged creatures you can find in most gardens.
To solve this problem, paleontologists, led by Mikael Leritier of Claude Bernard University, scanned the remains of several particularly well-preserved juveniles and used tomography techniques to recreate their cups. As did Leritaire and his colleagues described In the magazine Advancement of scienceAncient arthropods have transferred some of their facial features to their distant modern relatives.
Scans showed they looked like millipedes Arthropods They had seven-segment antennae, and a modified coulomb behind their heads. Arthropods It also had some features in common with centipedes, such as a fully coated lower jaw, and a pair of leg-like jaw structures called the maxilla. While centipedes and millipedes are both polypods, their precise relationship to each other has been the subject of some controversy among polypod enthusiasts. The new findings suggest that the two species should be grouped together, due to a shared heritage that makes them more closely related to each other than to many other types of legs, such as pauropods.
With a more complete idea of what Arthropods Apparently, paleontologists said there are some conclusions to be drawn about how they behaved. Their diet likely consisted of already dead animals that they could scavenge, the scientists wrote.
While the study provides the most complete view of extinct arthropods to date, James Lumsdale, associate professor of paleobiology at West Virginia University, wrote an accompanying article. condition Explaining that there is still a lot that we do not know.
“Without direct evidence from the gastrointestinal tract, it remains unclear exactly what it is Arthropods books. “The respiratory organs also remain unknown, leaving this a possibility Arthropods “It was watery.”
That can’t be ruled out either, Lumsdale said Arthropods He spent different stages of his life in different environments. So there you have it: Millions of years ago, crawling creatures roughly as tall as an alligator roamed the land, and perhaps the water, snatching bites at dead animals. Next time you see millipedes running around your floor, take a second to be grateful for their tiny size before you decide to squash them.
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