Spectacular specimen

This bug's a big one - 8 feet long - and New Mexico scientists nabbed some of its fossils

By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Reporter
April 14, 2005

Think mosquitoes and millipedes are nasty?

Then don't look too deeply into New Mexico's past.

Today, you can squish the tiny bugs, but 300 million years ago, 8-foot-long millipedes were in control of the landscape, and humans weren't even a gleam in evolution's eye.

New Mexico is now a world record holder of such "exquisitely grotesque creatures," as one worker at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science calls them. Evidence of the largest arthropleura - its technical name - ever found was recovered by the museum on Friday.

"In today's world, you couldn't have a bug this big," said Spencer Lucas, paleontology curator at the museum. "This is basically the Tyrannosaurus of the Pennsylvanian period, millions of years before dinosaurs evolved. If you took a time machine back, you'd definitely want to check your sleeping bag for these suckers before getting in."

The Pennsylvanian time period lasted from 325 to 280 million years ago.