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WASHINGTON (AP) — As if the largest bug to ever live – a monster nearly 9 feet long with several dozen legs – wasn’t terrifying enough, scientists could only just imagine what the extinct beast’s head looked like. That’s because many of the fossils of these creatures are headless shells that were left behind when they molted, squirming out of their exoskeletons through the head opening as they grew ever bigger — up to 8 to 9 feet (2.6 meters) and more than 100 pounds (50 kilograms). Now, scientists have produced a mug shot after studying fossils of juveniles that...

A new species of millipede, Eumillipes persephone, which has up to 1,306 legs – the most of any animal ever knownThe first true millipede—1,306 legs long, Paul E. Marek, Bruno A. Buzatto, William A. Shear, Jackson C. Means, Dennis G. Black, Mark S. Harvey, Juanita Rodriguez, Scientific Reports VIEW 2 IMAGES Most millipedes are frauds – despite their name being Latin for “thousand legs,” they usually only have a few hundred at most. But a newly discovered species is the first to really earn its name with well over 1,000 legs, far more than any other creature on the planet....

Named Kampecaris obanensis, the prehistoric millipede lived during the Silurian period, about 425 million years ago. The ancient creature was a small (2-3 cm in length), short-bodied animal with three recognizable sections. It likely lived near a lake in a semi-arid forested environment and ate decomposing plants. Its fossilized remains were unearthed on the island of Kerrera in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. The specimen is about 75 million years younger than the age other paleontologists have estimated the oldest millipede to be using a technique known as molecular clock dating. The oldest fossil of a land-dwelling, stemmed plant, Cooksonia, has...

A trio of paleontologists has announced the discovery of a fossil belonging to a new species of ancient arthropod that rivals the largest ever found. They detail their finding in Wednesday's publication of the journal Nature. Hundreds of millions of years ago, arthropods, which include modern-day spiders, insects, and crustaceans, were much larger, and we're not talking the size of a small dog. An extinct millipede called Arthropleura reached up to 8.5 feet in length, making it the largest land invertebrate ever known to exist. Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, which extended 8.2 feet, dwelled in the water (pictured right).