Kingdom Animalia Subphylum Myriapoda Superorder †Archipolypoda Rank Species | Phylum Arthropoda Subclass Chilognatha Order †Euphoberiida | |
Euphoberia armigera is a species of myriapod that lived until the Pennsylvanian epoch 332–318 million years ago. Many sources differentiate on its size and whether it is a millipede, centipede or even new class of myriapod.
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Size dispute
The species has what seem to be legitimate sources about its size saying it is no more than 10 cm (4 inches), like the Illinois State Museum. Yet there is authors like George R. McGhee Jr. who mentioned E. armigera as reaching as long as 1 meter (39 inches) in his book When the Invasion of The Land Failed: The Legacy of Devonian Extinctions, on page 238, describing it as "individuals that attained one meter in length" It is unknown why there are many sources stating various such a huge size difference. In the some forms of media the genus is credited as the largest centipede.
Centipede, Millipede, or new class taxon
E. armigera, like many other members in its genus, was armed with forked spines down each segment like a centipede. However, it is consistently marked as an ancestor of or is a millipede The ventral plates are shaped differently than what is seen in modern centipedes and millipedes. Men named Messers, Carr and Worthen describe how the ventral plates, the dorsal plate along with other features of Euphoberia to The Annals and Magazine of Natural History about the difference between ancestral and modern millipedes with the writer noting how Euphoberia is different from other Myriapods alike it. A whole specimen from the Geological Survey of Illinois show either a flat body with many segments and spines similar of today's centipedes or a specimen on its side with a row of spines that would have faced upwards while the creature was standing. If this is true than the D example from the Survey show a primitive, spiked millipede-like animal.