Millipedes ‘as big as cars’ once roamed Northern England, rare fossil discovery reveals

Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Get our free Climate email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The species, which scientists at the University of Cambridge said was “as big as a car”, apparently roamed what is now Northern England during the Carboniferous period – around 100 million years before the age of the dinosaurs. “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.” open image in gallery Reconstruction of the giant millipede Arthropleura, which lived in Northern England, or at least what is now northern England, 326 million years ago The research team said invertebrates such as this species and early amphibians lived off the scattered vegetation around a series of creeks and rivers. “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 Dr Davies. “We have not yet found a fossilised head, so it’s difficult to know everything about them.” open image in gallery The fossil itself, found in a sandstone boulder on a beach 40 miles north of Newcastle The great size of Arthropleura has previously been attributed to a peak in atmospheric oxygen during the late Carboniferous and Permian periods, but because the new fossil comes from rocks deposited before this peak, it shows that oxygen cannot be the only explanation.