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<\/a><\/p>\nTo date, 14,232 millipede species have been described, with at least as many still awaiting discovery. Image credit: Vasquez-Valverde et al., doi: 10.1016\/j.cub.2026.05.035.<\/p>\n
\u201cMillipedes beat vertebrates onto land by more than 80 million years,\u201d said Virginia Tech\u2019s Dr. Paul Marek, senior author of the study.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really set the stage for later life on land, including humans and vertebrates.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their research, Dr. Marek and his colleagues combined genomic data from living millipede species with morphological evidence from fossils.<\/p>\n
They analyzed hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species and incorporated data from 29 fossils.<\/p>\n
The key breakthrough was obtaining DNA from two elusive groups \u2014 Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida \u2014 whose genetic material had never before been sequenced.<\/p>\n
The researchers traveled to Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, and Spain\u2019s Canary Islands to collect specimens of Siphoniulus neotropicus and Hirudicryptus canariensis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took 10 people over a week just to find this one tiny 10-mm adult,\u201d said first author Luisa \u2018Fernanda\u2019 Vasquez-Valverde, also from Virginia Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinding them in the field was hard because we were just seeing this little white nematode.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t know for sure it was a millipede until we looked under the microscope.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the two \u2018missing\u2019 groups, Siphonocryptida, turned out not to be its own distinct order, but part of an already-known lineage. The other, Siphoniulida, was finally placed on the evolutionary timeline.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s analysis traced millipede origins to nearly 460 million years ago (Ordovician period), roughly 35 million years before the oldest known millipede fossils, suggesting the animals appeared far earlier than previously believed.<\/p>\n
Millipedes beat vertebrates onto land by more than 80 million years, making them among the earliest pioneers of terrestrial life, feeding on decaying organic matter before trees, leaves, or flowering plants existed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest surprise was just how ancient some of these lineages turned out to be,\u201d Dr. Marek said.<\/p>\n
The study traces millipedes\u2019 chemical defenses to about 260 million years ago, making them among Earth\u2019s earliest producers of biological chemical weapons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made the first chemical weapons. They\u2019re little chemical factories,\u201d Dr. Marek said.<\/p>\n