Pneumodesmus newmani
Pneumodesmus newmani is a species of myriapod that lived in what is now Scotland during the latest Silurian and earliest Devonian period. It is one of the first myriapods, and among the oldest creatures to have lived on land. It was discovered in 2004, and is known from a single specimen from Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

The original uploader was Xenarachne at English Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 2.5 · 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
- PneumodesmusPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 432.9 Mya and 426.7 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Pneumodesmus newmani on record, most of them in the Silurian. 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
3 occurrences- Silurian100%
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
1 formation
- Cowie Formation · Stonehaven Group3
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The named rock units Pneumodesmus newmani has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Pneumodesmus newmani and its relatives
SilurianWhere Pneumodesmus newmani and its relatives were recorded in the Silurian.
Found in the same rock
25 taxa- Albadesmus almondi1 site
- Ambitisporites avitus1 site
- Ambitisporites dilutus1 site
- Archaeozonotriletes chulus1 site
- Artemopyra brevicosta1 site
- Artemopyra sp.1 site
- Cheilotetras caledonica1 site
- Cowiedesmus eroticopodus1 site
- Cowielepis1 site
- Cowielepis ritchiei1 site
- Cymbosporites sp.1 site
- Dictyocaris1 site
- Dyadospora murusattenuata1 site
- Dyadospora murusdensa1 site
- Hemicyclaspis1 site
- Hispanaediscus lamontii1 site
- Hispanaediscus verrucatus1 site
- Hispanaediscus wenlockensis1 site
- Laevolancis divellomedium1 site
- Laevolancis plicata1 site
- Nanahughmilleria norvegica1 site
- Pseudodyadospora petasus1 site
- Synorisporites spp.1 site
- Tetrahedraletes medinensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Pneumodesmus newmani, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
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
2 references- Morphology and taxonomy of Paleozoic millipedes (Diplopoda: Chilognatha: Archipolypoda) from Scotland2
- Age of the basal ‘Lower Old Red Sandstone’ Stonehaven Group of Scotland: The oldest reported air-breathing land animal is Silurian (late Wenlock) in age1
Each of the 3 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Pneumodesmus newmani
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- The original uploader was Xenarachne at English Wikipedia .
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Pneumodesmus newmani was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itPneumodesmus through timeFormations of the SilurianThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wilson and Anderson 2004