Monster millipede found... in Wales
A NeW species of millipede has been discovered in an old Welsh coal mine.
The brown, 1.6in arthropod was found underneath a pile of stones by a team of naturalists at Maerdy Colliery in the Rhondda Valleys of South Wales.
The species has been named Maerdy Monster after the pit which shut in 1990.
Scientist Liam Olds said: ‘It’s not every day that you find a species new to science. It shows you don’t have to go to the Amazon to find new things.’
Mr Olds said he and his team, including millipede expert Christian Owen, were recording different life forms at the former working mine in December when they made their world-first discovery.
entomologist Mr Olds, who studies insects, said: ‘Under these stones and sleepers were brown millipedes unlike anything Christian had seen before. he made the assumption these millipedes were merely an alternative colour form of an already existing but rare species known from numerous sites in South Wales.
‘But after putting them under his microscope he recognised they were a completely different species.’
Specimens were then sent to the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Germany, who confirmed they were a new species.
experts believe it is the first millipede species found in the UK since 1993.