Topic description and stories

Millipedes ‘as big as cars’ once roamed England

21 Dec 2021

The largest-ever fossil of a giant millipede – as big as a car – has been found on a beach in the north of England.

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Top: Complete specimen of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba biota of South China. Bottom: Magnification of ventral nerve cord of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis.

Opinion: Our 500 million-year-old nervous system fossil shines a light on animal evolution

29 Feb 2016

Javier Ortega-Hernández (Department of Zoology) discusses what the discovery of the earliest known fossilised nervous system could tell us about...

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Strigamia maritima male, Loch Linnhe, Scotland

Amazing feet of science: Researchers sequence the centipede genome

25 Nov 2014

What it lacks in genes, it certainly makes up for in legs: the genome of the humble centipede has been found to have around 15,000 genes – around 7...

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Chenjiangocaris kunmingensis arthropod from the early Cambrian Xiaoshioba biota and a reconstruction

Feeding limbs and nervous system of one of Earth’s earliest animals discovered

27 Feb 2013

Unique fossils literally ‘lift the lid’ on ancient creature’s head to expose one of the earliest examples of food manipulating limbs in evolutionary...

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