The largest land arthropod of all time! Woo!

Name/pronounce: arthroleura (ah-throw-ploo-ra) meaning side joint
lived: 340 - 280 mya
size: 0.3 - 2.6 meters long
diet: we’ll get to that
found: N.A, Middle East and Europe
fossil:

Arthropleura was made out of up to 30 individual plates, underneath each was a pair of legs. It would have looked similar to todays centipedes, only giant. It’s size is credited to the high levels of oxygen in the atmosphere at the time and a low number of terrestrial vertebrate predators.

Scientists are unsure of what the animal would have eaten as not a single mouth has been found that has been preserved. It is thought that it would have a set of powerful jaws which would suggest that it ate meat, however recent finding of pollen in its gut suggest otherwise…if this is the case, it would have eaten up to a tonne of plant life per year.

When I was looking for a picture of a fossil I found that there are by far more fossils of the animals footprints than of their actual bodies. When moving, it would stretch it’s body out to a greater length giving it greater strides and allowing itself to move faster. It is also thought that it probably was in water sometimes too to do things such as molt its shell.

The group to which arthropleura belongs to dates all the way back to 420 mya and could very well have been the first arthropods to live on land more than in the water. Around 280 swamp areas were becoming more scarce and thus there was a decline and eventual extinction of the arthroleura.

It’s possible relative, myriapods, are what we have now, however their exact relationship isn’t known.