Spirobolida
Spirobolida is an order of "round-backed" millipedes containing approximately 500 species in 12 families. Its members are distinguished by the presence of a "pronounced suture that runs "vertically down the front of the head". Most of the species live in the tropics, and many are brightly coloured. Mature males have two pairs of modified legs, the gonopods, consisting of the eighth and ninth leg pairs: the posterior gonopods are used in sperm-transfer while the anterior gonopods are fused into a single plate-like structure.

Randal J. (RJFerret) · 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
- JuliformiaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Time the record covers
At least 300 million years on record.
The record covers at least 300.9 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 301.4 Mya to 11.7 ka.
9 occurrences of Spirobolida on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. 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
9 occurrences- Carboniferous22%
- Permian11%
- Late Cretaceous33%
- Miocene11%
- Pleistocene22%
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
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The named rock units Spirobolida has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Spirobolida and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Spirobolida and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
153 taxa- Chulsanbaatar vulgaris3 sites
- Nemegtbaatar gobiensis3 sites
- Protoceratopsidae3 sites
- Adamisaurus magnidentatus2 sites
- Ankylosauridae2 sites
- Anthracojulus pictus2 sites
- Asioryctes nemegtensis2 sites
- Barunlestes butleri2 sites
- Catopsbaatar catopsaloides2 sites
- Dawsonerpeton polydens2 sites
- Deltatheridium pretrituberculare tardum2 sites
- Gobiderma pulchra2 sites
- Gobiulus sabulosus2 sites
- Progyrolepis speciosus2 sites
- Protoceratops2 sites
- Slavoia darevskii2 sites
- Sphaerolepis kounoviensis2 sites
- Accipiter cooperii1 site
- Acrolepis gigas1 site
- Aenocyon dirus1 site
- Amara insignis1 site
- Anthracoblattina1 site
- Aphelocoma1 site
- Arroyoscyta novaemexicana1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Spirobolida, 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
7 references- Spiroboloid millipeds from the Late Cretaceous of the Gobi Desert, Mongolia3
- The millipedes and centipedes of Chiapas amber1
- A juliform milliped from the upper Pennsylvanian (Virgilian) Bursum Formation, Carrizo Arroyo, of central New Mexico1
- Unusual preservation of late Quaternary millipedes from Jamaica1
- Quaternary myriopods and insects of California1
- Fritsch, 18991
- Über die Fauna der Gaskohle des Pilsner und Rakonitzer Beckens1
Each of the 9 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 Spirobolida
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Randal J. (RJFerret)
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.5
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Spirobolida”
- 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 itJuliformia through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cook 1895)