UT Austin scientists found that the fossil millipede Kampecaris obanensis was 425 million years old
Scientists have found a 425-million-year-old millipede fossil from the Scottish island of Kerrera is older than any known fossil of an insect, arachnid, or other related bugs. A team of scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has used fossil dating techniques and discovered the world's oldest bug.
Detailed in a new study published by scientists in the journal Historical Biology, this short-bodied, sectional prehistoric millipede named Kampecaris obanensisonce resided during the Silurian period and measures out at just 2-3 cm in length.
According to the research paper, a rapid radiative evolution from simple intermontane lake communities into more advanced lowland communities took only about 40 million years to reach complex forest grade communities by the Middle Devonian Givetian circa 385 million years ago, revealing that the complexities of cohabitation between bugs and plants happened far faster than previously believed.
According to reports, they used a method known as molecular clock dating, which depends on DNA’s mutation rate. Other research using fossil dating found that the oldest fossil of a land-dwelling stemmed plant is 425 million years of age and 75 million years more youthful than molecular clock estimates.
Through this discovery, scientists offered new evidence on the origin and evolution of bugs and plants while suggesting that how these species evolved much more rapidly than previously thought, going from lake-hugging communities to complex forest ecosystems in just 40 million years.
