A giant millipede, nearly as long as a small car, once crawled around what is now northern England.
Summary
- (CNN) A fossil of a giant millipede found on a beach in northern England has revealed the “biggest bug that ever lived,” paleontologists say.
- The fossil was discovered in January 2018 in a chunk of sandstone that had fallen from a cliff onto the beach at Howick Bay in Northumberland.
- “It was an incredibly exciting find, but the fossil is so large it took four of us to carry it up the cliff face,” said Davies in a news statement.
- The fossilized remains of the creature, named Arthropleura, dated from the Carboniferous Period about 326 million years ago.
- That’s over 100 million years before the rise of the dinosaurs.