The “Biggest Bug Ever”!
It’s being described as “the biggest bug that ever lived.” Welcome to Arthropleura, a fossil millipede 326 million years old and a whopping nine feet long! Its weight is estimated at 110 pounds. is makes it the largest invertebrate ever discovered, living or dead.
A team led by Neil S. Davies (Cambridge University, UK) described Arthropleura in the Journal of the Geological Society based on fragments contained within a sandstone block that had fallen to the beach at Howick Bay in Northumberland some 40 miles north of Newcastle in northern England. By happenstance, that block was spotted by a former Ph.D. student from the Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences. It has been dated to the Carboniferous Period.
The Carboniferous was a time of dense tropical swamps and forests across large swaths of the Earth that le behind many of today’s vast coal deposits. Because of the lush vegetation, there was an unusually high amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. ose high oxygen levels super-fueled living critters. For instance, in those days dragonies had wingspans of two and a half feet. Scientists aren’t sure if high oxygen levels fueled the growth of Arthropleura, but rest assured, this is one bug you would not have wanted to encounter during a walk in the forest!