Two previously elusive millipede groups, Siphoniurida and Siphonocryptida, have been identified as the last missing links in the evolutionary history of Earth’s oldest land animals, as revealed by a research team from Virginia Tech.
As of now, 14,232 millipede species have been identified, with countless others yet to be documented. Image credit: Vazquez Valverde et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.05.035.
“Millipedes helped pave the way for vertebrates to inhabit land for over 80 million years,” stated Dr. Paul Marek, the lead author from Virginia Tech.
“They truly laid the groundwork for subsequent terrestrial life, including humans and other vertebrates.”
In this groundbreaking study, Dr. Marek and his team merged genomic data from existing millipede species with fossil morphological evidence.
They analyzed hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species, including data from 29 fossils.
A significant milestone was the successful sequencing of DNA from the two elusive groups, Siphoniurida and Siphonocryptida, whose genetic information had never been accessed before.
Researchers traveled to Mexico’s Los Tuxtlas Island and Spain’s Canary Islands to gather specimens such as Sifoniurus neotropicus and Hildicryptus canariensis.
“It took 10 researchers over a week to locate a single tiny 10mm adult,” commented lead author Luisa ‘Fernanda’ Vázquez Valverde, also affiliated with Virginia Tech.
“Finding them in the wild was difficult because they resembled small white nematodes.”
“I wasn’t even sure it was a millipede until I examined it under the microscope.”
Interestingly, the study revealed that one of the “missing” groups, Siphonocryptida, is not a standalone order but part of an already recognized lineage. In contrast, Siphoniurida was successfully positioned on the evolutionary timeline.
The research traces the origins of millipedes back roughly 460 million years, during the Ordovician period, about 35 million years before the earliest known millipede fossils, suggesting these creatures arose much earlier than previously believed.
Millipedes dominated the terrestrial landscape over 80 million years ago, thriving on decaying organic matter even before the emergence of trees and flowering plants, marking them as some of the earliest terrestrial pioneers.
“The most surprising aspect was the ancient nature of some of these lineages,” noted Dr. Marek.
This study also indicates that millipedes have been producing chemical defenses for approximately 260 million years, establishing them as one of the earliest creators of biological and chemical substances on Earth.
“They were among the first to develop chemical defenses; essentially, they are tiny chemical factories,” stated Dr. Marek.
For more insights, refer to the study results published in Current Biology.
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Luisa F. Vázquez Valverde et al.. Reshaping the millipede tree of life by including the last two unsampled orders. Current Biology, published online June 12, 2026. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.05.035
Source: www.sci.news
