If you're not comfortable with crawlies, be aware that you weren't living in the Carboniferous period, which was around 100 million years before the dinosaurs arrived in the UK.
There is a fossil along the coast of northeast England that is the largest one ever found. It's thought to have been about 9 feet long, so we're talking about the length of a car.
This class of creature is the largest-known of all time, and the remains of it are now extinct. The discovery was a chance one.
Neil Davies is an Earth scientist from the University of Cambridge in the UK. One of our former PhD students spotted the fossil when he was walking by, because the boulder cracked open and exposed it.
It took four of us to carry the fossil up the cliff face.
The segments can be seen in the stone. Neil Davies is a person.
The section of fossil that was recovered is 75 centimeters in length, which is 30 inches larger than the actual millipede. The team thinks it could have weighed around 50 kilograms.
The fossil is teaching experts more about the past, as well as being a record breaker. The UK was close to the equator in the Carboniferous Period. The type of location is different.
Two previous fossils of this type were found in Germany and were smaller in size. The earlier findings suggested that the invertebrates lived around coal swamps, where the vast amount of biomass built-up as peat as it died eventually turned into coal.
The fossil was uncovered. Neil Davies is a person.
It is generally accepted that arthropods can't get this big, as oxygen levels aren't high enough to facilitate their method of breathing at larger sizes.
The fossil dates from before the atmospheric oxygen peak of the late Carboniferous and Permian periods, when the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere was only 23 percent, not much higher than today's 21 percent. The rise in oxygen can't be the only factor that allows arthropods to reach such large sizes.
The researchers say that the size of the arthropod is due to a high diet of vitamins and minerals.
There were plenty of nuts and seeds available in the leaf litter at the time, and they may have been a source of food for other animals.
The arthropods lived around the equator for 45 million years before going extinct. The reason for the extinction isn't clear, but we're glad they're not around.
J.W. Schneider is a person. The Bergakademie Freiberg.
The fossil was found in sandstone, which would have been in a river channel. It is likely to be a section of the Arthropleura that was filled with sand and preserved.
This kind of preservation is very rare, and every new discovery can teach us a lot about how these ancient creatures lived and evolved.
The fossils of giant millipede are rare because their bodies tend to disarticulate, so it's likely that the fossil is a carapace that the animal shed as it grew.
It's difficult to know everything about them because they haven't found a head yet.
The Journal of the Geological Society has published the research.
