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Millipedes ‘as big as cars’ once roamed Northern England


Eldorado

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Just days after the discovery of an extant millipede species with over a thousand legs in Australia, the world of diplopodology – the study of millipedes – is being rocked by a fossil find which has revealed the biggest millipede ever to have lived.

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.

Back then, the land which became the cold, damp country we now know as Great Britain lay much closer to the equator, so Northumberland – where the fossil was found – would have had a more tropical climate.

MSN

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7 hours ago, XenoFish said:

Yikes. I don't even like the little ones. Don't want to imagine one that size.

I don't even want to look at the picture! I hate those things! They creep me right out!

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7 hours ago, jethrofloyd said:

Luckily for us a meteor fell in Mexico 66 million years ago. And sent all sorts of the monsters into a fossil-history.

They were way back in the early days long before the dinosaurs, just a lobster dinner for velociraptors.  Tyrannosaurs are closer in time to cell phones than to these weird crawlies. .

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That is the stuff of nightmares.

Edited by Hyperionxvii
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*As long as cars.

You don’t see many 50cm wide x 25cm tall cars getting around…

Would be cool to see one of these critters. 
Time to extract DNA and get cloning.

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And that was because oxygen levels being 3 times higher than today 

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Indeed this is what often forgotten...the value of oxygen level on Earth rised during the 800-542 million years...at the end of this period coincidentally happened the Cambrian explosion leading to the apparition of those arthropods...quite a boost on diversity and size ;-)

Edited by Amorlind
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17 hours ago, Hyperionxvii said:

That is the stuff of nightmares.

That would be a centipede of the same size. Centipedes are fast hunters. Image one the size of a car.

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8 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

That would be a centipede of the same size. Centipedes are fast hunters. Image one the size of a car.

Yea but they taste great, one that big would feed a village for week.:D

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19 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

That would be a centipede of the same size. Centipedes are fast hunters. Image one the size of a car.

Here is a peer reviewed journal you may find interesting.

The first true millipede—1306 legs long  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02447-0

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14 hours ago, Timothy said:

*As long as cars.  You don’t see many 50cm wide x 25cm tall cars getting around…

Which is why you should always go back to the original source whenever possible.  What the 'scientists from Cambridge University' actually said was:

"This fossil was found in northern England.  This species could grow as big as a car that is 2.5m long, 50cm wide and 25cm tall.  We estimate these are the average dimensions of cars in northern England where things are gloomy and strange."

Even though I've made that up it's in quotation marks so it must be true.  You can make it even more true by naming some of the scientists involved.  For credibility you should avoid northern-sounding names like Alf or Whippet because northerners are no good at science.

Comparison with normal small car:Picture1.thumb.jpg.b08d5a06d6f4e0a011d3fe22ba224d06.jpg

Comparison with a hypothetical northern car:Picture2.thumb.jpg.b193aef8546b9a5c893f97a685bced37.jpg

 

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5 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

Yea but they taste great, one that big would feed a village for week.:D

You ate centipedes?

Well, watch the next video, and imagine the centipede is the size of a car. I wonder who of the two, you or the centipede, will be eaten:

 

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5 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

Here is a peer reviewed journal you may find interesting.

The first true millipede—1306 legs long  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02447-0

You do know the difference between a millipede and a centipede, right? It's not just the number of legs...

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6 hours ago, Abramelin said:

You ate centipedes?

Well, watch the next video, and imagine the centipede is the size of a car. I wonder who of the two, you or the centipede, will be eaten:

 

Yes I have eaten things that would scare most people during my travels around the world!:lol:

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6 hours ago, Abramelin said:

You do know the difference between a millipede and a centipede, right? It's not just the number of legs...

Honestly not really. But they all taste the same just like Chicken!:lol:

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11 minutes ago, Manwon Lender said:

Honestly not really. But they all taste the same just like Chicken!:lol:

All 'peer reviewed', no doubt.

B)

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Just now, Abramelin said:

All 'peer reviewed', no doubt.

B)

what the hell is a peer reviewed taste!:unsure::lol:

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