Archidesmida

The Archidesmida is an extinct order of millipedes known from fossils from the Devonian period of Europe and North America. Archidesmidans have broad flat keels (paranota) extending from their body segments, and a modified pair of legs on the 8th segment that may have been involved in mating, similar to the gonopods of living millipedes which insert sperm into females. Alternately, the modified legs may have been used to grasp onto partners during mating.

Archidesmida

Benjamin Peach · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
ArchipolypodaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda

Time the record covers

At least 54 million years on record.

The record covers at least 413.02 Mya to 358.86 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 419.62 Mya to 346.7 Mya.

Silurian — about 0 of 6 occurrencesDevonian — about 5 of 6 occurrencesDevonianCarboniferous — about 1 of 6 occurrencesCarboniferous421–419 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences419–416 Mya — about 1 occurrence416–413 Mya — about 1 occurrence413–411 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences383–381 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences381–378 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences378–376 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences376–373 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences373–371 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences365–363 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences363–360 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences360–358 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences358–355 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences355–353 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences353–350 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences350–348 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences348–345 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences413.02 Mya358.86 Mya421 Mya345 Mya

6 occurrences of Archidesmida on record, most of them in the Devonian. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

6 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

4 formations

Dundee Flagstone — 56.67°N, 2.77°WDundee Flagstone — 56.57°N, 2.73°WCatskill — 41.34°N, 77.68°WEscuminac — 48.11°N, 66.37°WBallagan — 55.84°N, 2.07°W

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The named rock units Archidesmida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Archidesmida and its relatives

Devonian

Where Archidesmida and its relatives were recorded in the Devonian.

Found in the same rock

24 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Archidesmida, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

4 references

Each of the 6 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Archidesmida

Credit
Benjamin Peach
Licence
Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Archidesmida was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itArchipolypoda through timeFormations of the DevonianThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wilson and Anderson 2004