Level 1 - Absolute Beginner
Scientists found something amazing about millipedes. Millipedes moved from water to land very, very long ago. They got to land 80 million years before animals with bones.
A new study from Virginia Tech University says millipedes first lived on land about 460 million years ago. Animals with bones, like fish and frogs, came to land much later.
Millipedes ate dead leaves and old plants on the ground. This helped make soil. Good soil helped plants grow on land.
- millipede
- a small animal with a long body and many legs
- land
- the dry part of Earth, not the sea
- bones
- the hard parts inside an animal's body
- soil
- the top layer of ground where plants grow
- million
- one thousand thousand (1,000,000)
- study
- careful research to find facts
- ancient
- very, very old
- plants
- living things that grow in the ground, like trees and flowers
Level 2 - Elementary
A new scientific study says that millipedes conquered land about 460 million years ago, which is 35 million years earlier than scientists thought before. This also means millipedes beat vertebrates, animals with backbones, to land by about 80 million years.
The research was led by Dr. Paul Marek at Virginia Tech University. His team studied DNA from 82 living millipede species and data from 29 fossils. The study was published in the journal Current Biology in June 2026.
Millipedes were important because they ate dead plant material, which helped create the first soils on Earth. Better soils allowed more plants to grow and spread across the land.
- vertebrate
- an animal that has a backbone or spinal column
- fossil
- the preserved remains of an ancient plant or animal found in rock
- species
- a group of animals or plants of the same type
- DNA
- the molecule inside cells that carries genetic information
- conquered
- successfully moved into and lived in a new place or territory
- journal
- a scientific magazine where researchers publish their findings
- detritivore
- an animal that eats dead plant or animal material
- published
- officially printed and made available for people to read
Level 3 - Intermediate
A landmark study published in Current Biology on June 12, 2026 has pushed back the origin of land-dwelling millipedes by 35 million years, placing their colonisation of terrestrial environments at approximately 460 million years ago during the Ordovician period. The research, led by Dr. Paul Marek of Virginia Tech University, reveals that millipedes beat vertebrates to land by more than 80 million years.
The team used molecular clock techniques, combining DNA sequences from 82 living millipede species with morphological data from 29 fossil specimens. One of the study's major achievements was obtaining the first-ever DNA sequences from two highly elusive millipede orders, Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida, which had previously been genomic unknowns.
Beyond establishing a new timeline, the study reframes millipedes' ecological role in Earth's history. As detritivores consuming decomposing organic matter, early millipedes played a key role in building the proto-soils that enabled the spread of terrestrial plants, fundamentally reshaping the planet's surface ecosystems during the Ordovician and Silurian periods.
- molecular clock
- a technique that uses DNA mutation rates to estimate when species diverged
- colonisation
- the process of moving into and establishing a population in a new habitat
- Ordovician
- a geological period from about 485 to 444 million years ago
- morphological
- relating to the physical form and structure of organisms
- elusive
- difficult to find or study
- detritivore
- an organism that feeds on dead and decaying organic matter
- proto-soil
- an early form of soil that began forming during the first colonisation of land
- genomic
- relating to an organism's complete set of DNA
Level 4 - Advanced
A study published in Current Biology on June 12, 2026 by Dr. Paul Marek and colleagues at Virginia Tech University has fundamentally revised the evolutionary timeline of terrestrial life. By applying molecular clock analyses to a dataset integrating DNA sequences from 82 extant millipede species with morphological data from 29 fossil calibration points, the team traced the origin of land-dwelling Diplopoda to approximately 460 million years ago, 35 million years earlier than the oldest known millipede fossil and more than 80 million years before the earliest vertebrate footprints on land.
The research achieved a milestone considered nearly impossible by arachnologists and myriapodologists: sequencing nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from the highly elusive orders Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida. These two lineages, whose worm-like members live in deep leaf litter and soil, had been entirely absent from prior molecular phylogenies, leaving a critical gap in the arthropod tree of life. Their inclusion allowed the team to resolve deep divergence events that had remained statistically uncertain for decades.
The ecological implications are equally far-reaching. The revised chronology positions millipedes as foundational engineers of Ordovician and Silurian terrestrial ecosystems. As the dominant detritivores in an era preceding the spread of vascular plants, these early myriapods processed vast quantities of cyanobacterial and algal mat material, catalysing the formation of proto-soils. It is now argued that this soil-building function created the substrate conditions necessary for land plants to diversify, linking millipede evolution directly to the greening of Earth's continental surfaces.
- extant
- still existing; not extinct
- calibration point
- a known fossil date used to anchor a molecular clock estimate
- myriapodologist
- a scientist who specialises in myriapods (centipedes, millipedes, and relatives)
- mitochondrial DNA
- genetic material found in cell mitochondria, inherited solely from the mother
- phylogeny
- the evolutionary history and relationships among species
- divergence
- the point in evolution where two lineages split from a common ancestor
- detritivore
- an organism that feeds on dead and decaying organic matter, recycling nutrients
- catalysing
- causing or accelerating a process or reaction
