Invertebrate Zoology, Faculty of Biology and Geology, UBB

18/06/2026

The first animals to crawl out of the muck for a life on land may have made the voyage on a lot of tiny legs. They were the millipedes, and 425-million-year-old fossils indicate they were among the first animals on Earth to breathe air. For a time, millipedes ruled the surface world, with some growing over nine feet in length. Now we have a more complete picture of their evolutionary history, thanks to research recently published in Current Biology.

The missing pieces of the millipede puzzle were two groups that were known to science but lacked fresh specimens for DNA analysis. So a team of entomologists traveled to Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, and Spain’s Canary Islands to find them. It was no easy task. “It took 10 people over a week just to find this one tiny 10-millimeter adult,” study co-author Luisa “Fernanda” Vasquez-Valverde of Virginia Tech said in a statement. “Finding them in the field was hard because we were just seeing this little white nematode. We didn’t know for sure it was a millipede until we looked under the microscope.”

By sequencing their DNA, comparing it with existing millipede genomes, and incorporating those results with data from the fossil record, the team was able to construct the most complete evolutionary tree of millipedes to date. They also discovered some surprises. According to their analysis, millipedes actually colonized land 460 million years ago—35 million years earlier than previously thought (and 80 million years before vertebrates). Two hundred and sixty million years ago, they had evolved the ability to manufacture terpene alkaloids, chemicals used to thwart predators. By the Jurassic period, all existing orders of millipedes except one were well established on Earth.

The land they conquered during the Ordovician period was an alien landscape compared to today. “There were no vertebrates, no trees, no leaves, no flowering plants, no plants with seeds,” study co-author Paul Marek also of Virginia Tech said. “Millipedes were feeding on decaying mosses, decomposed slime, and primordial gunk on the surface of the Earth.”

As detritivores, millipedes played an important role (then and now), breaking down organic material and returning the nutrients to the ecosystem.

So the next time you see one of the many-legged critters wriggling through the leaf litter, show a little respect for an early pioneer of life on land.

02/06/2026

Nearly 560 million years ago during the Ediacaran period, life on Earth was still simple. The multicellular creatures that existed fed on large mats of bacteria on the seafloor and mostly stayed rooted where the food was. At some point, though, that began to change. During the Ediacaran, for the first time in our planet’s history, animals started to move. We know this because they left their fossilized “footprints” in the seabed—meandering trails like a slug might make.

Unfortunately, while these soft-bodied organisms left traces of their movements, they didn’t leave many hints about their sensory organs. So to find out how they navigated their primordial environment, researchers from London’s National History Museum quantified more than 230 of these trails spanning tens of millions of years and used computer simulations to analyze them. They published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today.

Hidden within their looping tracks were clues to just how much of their environment these ancient creatures could detect. Before 546.5 million years ago, they could only sense around two widths of their own body and below—in other words, things they were directly in contact with (or nearby). But between 546.5 million and 539 million years ago they made a quantum leap in sensory range. By the end of the Ediacaran, these life-forms were able to detect things up to eight times their own body length in the distance.

It might seem like only a modest increase, but it had oversized implications. The researchers say this is consistent with Ediacaran life developing rudimentary photoreceptors, allowing them to sense light and dark, and even granting them blurry vision.

Put simply, they were the first organisms to actually catch even the haziest of glimpses of our planet.

According to the researchers, this shift from contact sensing to distant sensing dramatically changed their information environment, setting the stage for more complex neural pathways to emerge. “The Ediacaran expansion of perceptual range can be interpreted as an early prelude to a biological and ecological information revolution,” they wrote. Instead of passively reacting to stimuli in their immediate vicinity, they could now anticipate and more actively forage for food.

It also paved the way for the Cambrian explosion, which birthed a kaleidoscope of animal life occupying diverse niches beyond just the bacterial mats lining the sea floor.

Hey, a little information can go a long way.

29/05/2026

13/05/2026

Dear friends,

We are excited to announce the opening of registration for the European School on Ostracoda 2026! The ESO11 will take place in Beijing, China, from 12th to 16th August 2026.

The course will be hosted at the China University of Geosciences, Beijing, with Prof. Dr Dangpeng Xi serving as the local host.

The school offers theoretical insights into ostracodology combined with hands-on training and is aimed at early career researchers (MSc & PhD candidates, postdocs) as well as industrial staff.

Course topics include taxonomy, morphology, biodiversity, geological history, shell chemistry, (palaeo)ecology, and applied biostratigraphy of Ostracoda.

Course instructors:
Prof. Dr Peter Frenzel, Prof. Dr Dangpeng Xi, Prof. Dr Dayou Zhai, Dr Ilaria Mazzini, Dr Olga Schmitz, Prof. Dr Marie-Béatrice Forel, Prof. Dr Steffen Mischke, Dr Anton Waltschew, Dr Marta Marchegiano, and Dr He Wang.

For registration and further details, please visit:
https://www.support-irgo.net/ESO

For questions, contact the organizers at:
[email protected]

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the support of the Society of Friends of the International Research Group on Ostracoda (SF IRGO), the China University of Geosciences, Beijing, and MicroWorlds/Kreativika for their valuable contributions to ESO11.

We look forward to welcoming you to Beijing!

13/05/2026