Millipedes 'as big as cars' once roamed Northern England, fossil find reveals

Phys Org ^ | 20 December 2021 | University of Cambridge

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

They drive pretty small cars in England.

[hinckley buzzard]

Oh no, you must read the article. It says “global warming” may have been why it went extinct. Sometime you win sometimes you lose.

[hinckley buzzard]

Yes, The article suggested very high O2 levels in the atmosphere.

[SunkenCiv]

[njslim]

The O2 content of the atmosphere was 33 % vs 20.9 for today

The extra O2 made it possible for insects to grow to gigantic size as nsects breath through holes in their side

[null and void]

Either these millipedes had some very different structures, or the atmospheric oxygen level was very different those days.

I believe the Chixulub shallow sea impact blasted half the atmosphere into space.

Imagine a 120 mile wide white hot crater with seawater flooding in from all sides. It would look like a giant rocket nozzle blasting steam and entrained air into space for days on end!

The only land animals that survived we small. Probably burrow dwellers/nesters, already used to spending much of their lives is oxygen depleted holes.

[Paladin2]

[Paladin2]

“...could be due to global warming....”

Quite definitively uncertain...

[Colt1851Navy]

Bet you had to be careful with matches in a 33% oxygen environment.

[alexander_busek]

Either these millipedes had some very different structures, or the atmospheric oxygen level was very different those days.

This is already a matter of public knowledge.

As a result, undegraded carbon built up, resulting in the extensive burial of biologically fixed carbon, leading to an increase in oxygen levels in the atmosphere; estimates place the peak oxygen content as high as 35%, as compared to 21% today. This oxygen level may have increased wildfire activity. It also may have promoted gigantism of insects and amphibians, creatures whose size is today limited by their respiratory systems' ability to transport and distribute oxygen at lower atmospheric concentrations.

-Wikipedia

Regards,

[Red Badger]

"We have not yet found a fossilized head, so it's difficult to know everything about them."

[Red Badger]

That should be fairly easy to prove, or disprove, simply by raising some of these normal sized insects in sealed terrariums with a high oxygen content and see how big they get!..................

[alexander_busek]

That should be fairly easy to prove, or disprove, simply by raising some of these normal sized insects in sealed terrariums with a high oxygen content and see how big they get!..................

I don't know if insects (like fish?) will simply continue growing, bigger and bigger, as long as they are alive; if that were the case, then, yes: that experiment might prove that higher O2 levels could have the hoped-for result.

BUT - It might be that environmental pressures (in this case: higher O2 levels) might have to be maintained for millions of years, so that evolution can be allowed enough time to take its course.

Analogy: We have teeth because we (evolved to) eat food requiring chewing. But placing a person in a terrarium and feeding him nothing but pablum... You see where this is going...

Regards,

[Red Badger]

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-5-largest-millipedes-in-the-world/

[Scarlett156]

Photography was in its infancy then, so we’ll really never know.

[Scarlett156]

The geologic record does suggest that almost all life on the planet has nearly become extinct 3-4 times.

[mware]

At least they’re not centipedes. Those suckers bite.

[null and void]

Yup.

It also appears that there is a twelve thousand year solar micronova cycle.

[Mr. K]

I suspect if we were to watch the sun in a time lapse over thousands or millions of years it would flicker like a candle

And what happens when a huge meteor or asteroid hits the sun?

[SunkenCiv]

Millipedes — ****ing metric system! /s