@extinctera.org: Arthropleura lived during the Carboniferous period, around 300 million years ago. The biggest ones reached about 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) long and weighed around 50 kilograms (110 pounds). Scientists have studied it since its discovery in 1854. But most of its fossils were headless exoskeletons, left behind when the animal molted. Its head finally turned up in two young Arthropleura fossils from a coal field at Montceau-les-Mines, France, each only a few centimeters long. In 2024, scientists used CT scans to see the parts of the head still buried in the rock. The head had two short antennae, a small mouth for grinding plants, and eyes on stalks, like a crab's. No living millipede or centipede has eyestalks. "We discovered that it had the body of a millipede, but head of a centipede," said Mickaël Lhéritier of Claude Bernard University Lyon, the study's lead author. It took 170 years, and two baby fossils, to finally see its face.

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Saturday 31 October 2026 01:02:24 GMT