the times | Tuesday December 21 2021 5
News
Giant millipedes the length of cars once
scuttled across northern England, the
fluke discovery of a fossil has revealed.
A specimen was found by three
Cambridge scientists who were on a
road trip in January 2018, visiting geo-
logical formations. On Howick beach
in Northumberland, part of the Stain-
more Formation, they saw that a large
sandstone boulder had fallen from the
cliff and split in two.
The area is not known for fossils but
when they peered inside they saw the
remains of the largest-known inverte-
brate animal of all time — a 2.7m milli-
pede called arthropleura that lived
326 million years ago.
“It’s certainly the biggest arthropod
fossil — full stop — in the world,” Dr
Neil Davies, of the university’s Depart-
ment of Earth Sciences, one of the team
who found it, said. The previous record
holder had been an ancient sea scorpi-
on, which grew to about 2.5m.
When arthropleura roamed North-
scape dotted with trees, on a relatively
open, equatorial sandy coastline.
The Northumberland specimen is
only the third such fossil ever found; the
other two were discovered in Germany
more than a century ago.
The creature would have been about
55cm wide and would likely haveweighed about 50kg. The fossil recov-
ered from Howick Bay is about 75cm
long, representing only a small part.
It appears to have been a moulted
piece of the arthropleura’s exoskeleton,
which became filled with sand, preserv-
ing it. Its body is thought to have had
about 30 segments; each would haveMonster specimen
Saarbrucker
Schichten
Friedrichsthal,
Germany
Estimated
length 1.0m Dohlen Formation
Dohlen, Germany
Estimated length
0.6mFossil specimen
recoveredEdinburghCarlisleNewcastleFossil
discovered on
Howick beach,
Northumbria10 milesHow the
fossils compare Stainmore Formation
Howick, Northumbria
Estimated length
1.9-2.7mGiant millipedes as long as cars scuttled around northern England
umberland, the ancient supercontinent
of Pangea was still forming and the land
that we now know as England was close
to the Equator. Reptiles and mammals
did not exist; grasses and flowers had
not yet evolved; and the giant millipede
would probably have been the largest
animal on the land.
Exactly what it ate is not clear. It may
have consumed nuts, seeds and other
plant matter or possibly tetrapods —
early four-legged amphibians the size
of labradors.
“It was a complete fluke of a discov-
ery,” Davies said. “The Northumber-
land coast is famous for castles and
scenery but not for fossils. The way the
boulder had fallen, it had cracked open
and perfectly exposed the fossil.”
Arthropleura lived during the Car-
boniferous period, more than 100 mil-
lion years before the age of dinosaurs.
Similar creatures are often pictured in
textbooks crawling through lush rain-
forest-type habitats. But the geological
record suggests that arthropleura
would have lived in a semi-arid land-had either two or four legs. The speci-
men extracted from the boulder had
been encased for more than 300 mil-
lion years. “The fossil is so large it took
four of us to carry it up the cliff face,”
Davies said.
The size of ancient arthropods such
as arthropleura was previously thought
to be a result of elevated levels of oxy-
gen in the air during the late Carbonif-
erous and Permian periods. The new
fossil shows that this cannot be the full
story; it predates these oxygen rises.
Arthropleura and its close relatives
lived around Earth’s equatorial region
for about 45 million years, becoming
extinct during the Permian period. The
cause of their disappearance is uncer-
tain but it coincides with the appear-
ance of reptiles.
The fossil has been described in the
Journal of the Geological Society. The
fossil will go on public display at Sedg-
wick Museum of Earth Sciences in
Cambridge in the new year.
Giant creepy-crawlies are instinctively
terrifying, leading article, page 33Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent
United player
gets 6-month
driving ban
Aaron Wan-Bissaka, the Manchester
United defender, has been banned from
the roads for six months and fined
£31,500 after he admitted driving while
disqualified and without insurance.
Wan-Bissaka, 24, also pleaded guilty
to failing to provide driver details for
two speeding offences in Bradford,
West Yorkshire, in September.
Lawyers for Wan-Bissaka said that
he was in “complete ignorance” of the
Yorkshire case because notification
letters were sent to his former home in
Croydon, south London.
The failure to reply led to a six-month
ban imposed in his absence at Leeds
magistrates’ court in June — five days
before police seized his Lamborghini
Urus sport utility vehicle when he was
stopped on the A34 in Manchester.
The court was told that Wan-Bissaka
already had six points on his licence
from a conviction in April last year.
Shaun Draycott, for the defence, told
Manchester magistrates’ court: “When
he was stopped... he was courteous and
respectful to the officers. He indicated
he had no idea he was disqualified.”
Speeding fines on motorways are
normally calculated as a percentage
of the offender’s weekly income and
are capped at £2,500. Magistrates
can exceed the cap in circumstances
involving repeat offenders or
where they take the view that
there are aggravating circum-
stances.
Wan-Bissaka earns about
£90,000 a week after joining
Manchester United in a
£50 million transfer from
Crystal Palace in June 2019.
His lawyer said that he
had been with the south
London club from the age
of 11. Seven years later he
hired an agent for the first time.
The solicitor said that football agents
were responsible for all manner of
personal services for their clients.
Draycott said that arrangements
were made for Wan-Bissaka’s agent to
visit his former home in London to
ensure that his affairs were properly
handled after his transfer.
He explained that the property was
being refurbished when the Yorkshire
letters were sent and the address was
subsequently let.
Draycott said: “The refurbishment
issue may have caused some difficulty.
He felt matters had been put in hand
and plainly they had not and he must
now pay the price for that.”
He accepted Win-Bissaka had failed
to notify the Driver and Vehicle Licens-
ing Agency of his change of address.
District Judge Bernard Begley said
that at least “six or seven letters” on the
speeding offences would have been
sent to the Croydon address. He accept-
ed, however, that Wan-Bissaka was un-
aware he was disqualified in June.
Banning him from driving for six
months, Judge Begley said: “Whether it
was wise for you... to delegate the tasks
in relation to moving from the London
address to Manchester is a matter you
will have to reflect upon.”
Wan-Bissaka, who lives with his
partner and a 12-month-old child in
Hale, Greater Manchester, was
fined £30,000 for driving while
disqualified and £1,500 for fail-
ing to give information on the
speeding matters.
He was also ordered to pay
a victim surcharge fee of £
and court costs of £160. No
separate penalty was issued
for the insurance offence.
It is not the highest motor-
ing fine given to a footballer.
Mario Lemina, a former
Southampton player, was
fined £96,000 after being
caught three times on speed
cameras and failing to tell police
that he had been behind the wheel.Peter Chappell
The police corruption drama Line of
Duty dominated BBC iPlayer’s most-
watched list this year, beating the
Olympics and the European football
championship.
The first episode of series six regis-
tered 9.2 million streams, and in total all
episodes drew 137.1 million views.
The Olympics had 90.2 million views
and Euro 2020 had 68.2 million.
BBC iPlayer is on course to top 6 bil-
lion views for the first time. It recordedLine of Duty tops iPlayer’s hit list
Jake Kanter Media Correspondent 5.9 million streams in the 11 months to
the end of November, which was 10 per
cent more than last year.
ITV Hub has had 1.5 billion streams
so far this year, and the most recent
figures for All 4, Channel 4’s online
video service, showed that it had
1.25 billion views in 2020.
Other popular programmes in iPlay-
er’s list of most-watched episodes were
Vigil, the submarine thriller that pre-
miered with 8 million streams, and
Time, a prison drama that had 7.3 mil-
lion streams for its opening episode.They ranked second and third and the
opening of The Serpent, a true-crime
drama, was fourth with 6.3 million
views. It was followed by England’s Eu-
ro final defeat to Italy with 6 million.
Popular box sets included Pretty
Little Liars, the American teen drama
with nearly 80 million streams, and
Silent Witness, which had 62.3 million
views. EastEnders was streamed
257 million times, nearly 100 million
more times than in the same period last
year, partly owing to a filming hiatus at
the height of the pandemic in 2020.Big wing An RAF C-130 Hercules from Brize Norton joined a flypast in Brussels for the retirement of the Belgian Air Force C-CPL MATTHEWS/RAF/TRIANGLE NEWSAaron Wan-Bissaka drove while
disqualified and without insurance