Hirudicryptus canariensis (left) Siphoniulus neotropicus (microscopic image at right) are the two rare millipedes whose DNA helped researchers complete the first evolutionary history of all living millipede orders.
Photos by Rafael Garcia and Paul Marek for Virginia Tech.
A paper published today (12 June 2026) in Current Biology is almost guaranteed to upset any creationists with the courage to read it and the ability to understand it. Written by an international team led by Associate Professor Paul Marek and Dr Luisa F. Vasquez-Valverde of Virginia Tech, it reports the completion of the first evolutionary history of all living millipede orders, including two rare groups whose DNA had never previously been included in a phylogenetic analysis.
Millipedes were amongst the earliest animals to colonise the land, arriving long before vertebrates had made the transition from water to land. According to the researchers, they beat vertebrates onto land by more than 80 million years. As detritivores, they helped to establish early terrestrial ecosystems by breaking down decaying organic matter and recycling nutrients, gradually helping to create soils in which later plant communities could develop.
For more than a century, biologists have known that two rare groups of millipedes — Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida — existed, but without fresh specimens it was impossible to analyse their DNA and confirm where they belonged in the millipede family tree. One of the groups includes species barely a centimetre long that spend their entire lives underground; the other is known from only a few locations.
Members of the team therefore travelled to Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, and the Spanish Canary Islands to collect Siphoniulus neotropicus and Hirudicryptus canariensis, the two millipedes whose DNA had not previously been included in an evolutionary analysis. By sequencing DNA from these groups, comparing hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species, and combining those results with evidence from 29 fossils, the researchers were able to determine where the groups fit into millipede history and when their lineages emerged.
The result was especially interesting because one of the supposed “orders”, Siphonocryptida, appears not to be a separate order after all, but part of an existing lineage. The other, Siphoniulida, could finally be placed among its closest relatives on the millipede evolutionary timeline. The analysis also pushed the likely origin of millipedes back to nearly 460 million years ago — roughly 35 million years earlier than the oldest known millipede fossils.
This is bad news for creationists for at least three reasons:
- It shows these arthropods had their origin hundreds of millions of years before their mythical “Creation Week”.
- It shows a long history of descent from a common origin, just as the Theory of Evolution predicts.
- It shows the researchers were entirely dependent on evolutionary theory to frame the question, predict relationships, interpret the DNA and fossil evidence, and explain the results — with no hint that they found evolution inadequate and no need to invoke magic, special creation, or the long-promised “collapse of Darwinism” that creationists have been assuring their followers is imminent, and has been for more than half a century.
Background^ The Millipede Family Tree. Millipedes belong to the arthropod class Diplopoda, part of the wider group Myriapoda, which also includes centipedes and their relatives. Their name means “double foot”, referring to the two pairs of legs carried on most body segments, which are formed by the fusion of two ancestral segments.The paper in Current Biology is accompanied by a news release via EurekAlert!
Their evolutionary history is usually divided into two broad branches. The first, Penicillata, contains the small, bristly millipedes, such as those in the order Polyxenida. The second, Chilognatha, contains the hardened, calcified-bodied millipedes and includes almost all familiar forms.
Chilognatha is divided into two major groups:
The worm-like millipedes are themselves divided into further branches. One is Colobognatha, a group of often small, secretive millipedes with specialised feeding structures. Another is Eugnatha, which includes several of the better-known orders, such as Polydesmida, Julida, Spirobolida and Spirostreptida.
- Pentazonia — the short-bodied “pill millipedes”, some of which can roll into a protective ball.
- Helminthomorpha — the long, worm-like millipedes, which contain the great majority of known species.
For many years, two rare groups, Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida, were awkward gaps in this picture because no fresh DNA had been available for analysis. The new study filled those gaps by sequencing DNA from living representatives and comparing hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species, then calibrating the evolutionary tree with evidence from 29 fossils.
The result was a clearer millipede family tree stretching back nearly 460 million years. It also showed that Siphonocryptida may not be a separate order after all, but part of an existing lineage. This is exactly how science progresses: not by forcing nature into old categories, but by revising those categories when new evidence demands it.
For creationists, the difficulty is obvious. The millipede tree is a branching history of common descent, deep time and evolutionary change, reconstructed from DNA, anatomy and fossils. It is not a pattern predicted by special creation, nor one requiring supernatural intervention to explain it.
Ancient millipedes still had secrets to tell
Researchers completed the first evolutionary history of Earth’s first land animals, pushing their origins tens of millions of years deeper into the past.
Long before vertebrates walked on land, millipedes had the place to themselves.
Hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs arrived, these early decomposers were helping establish Earth's terrestrial ecosystems. But despite their ancient history, scientists still hadn't fully unraveled their evolutionary story.
Now, a Virginia Tech-led team of international scientists has solved one of the last major mysteries in millipede evolution, revealing new clues about a group of animals that helped pave the way for life on land.
The findings, published in Current Biology, complete the first evolutionary history of all living millipede orders. By combining genomic data from living species with morphological evidence from fossils, researchers traced the group's origins to nearly 460 million years ago — suggesting millipedes may have been present long before the oldest known millipede fossils.
Millipedes beat vertebrates onto land by more than 80 million years. They really set the stage for later life on land, including humans and vertebrates.
Associate Professor Paul Marek, lead author
Department of Entomology
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Reconstructing the missing pieces
For more than a century, scientists knew that two rare groups of millipedes — Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida — existed, but without fresh specimens for DNA analysis, they couldn't confirm where they belonged in the millipede family tree.
One of the groups includes millipedes barely a centimeter long that spend their entire lives underground. The other survives in just a few known locations.
These last two were kind of like our white whales.
Associate Professor Paul Marek.
Researchers traveled to Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, and Spain's Canary Islands to collect Siphoniulus neotropicus and Hirudicryptus canariensis, two millipedes whose DNA had never been included in an evolutionary analysis.
It took 10 people over a week just to find this one tiny 10-millimeter adult. 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.
Dr. Luisa "Fernanda" Vasquez-Valverde, first author.
Department of Entomology
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA.
By sequencing DNA from the two groups, comparing hundreds of genes across 82 millipede species, and combining those results with evidence from 29 fossils, researchers were able to determine where the groups fit in millipede history and when their lineages emerged. The effort generated terabytes of genetic data and relied on Virginia Tech's Advanced Research Computing resources to reconstruct relationships stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
One group, Siphonocryptida, turned out not to be a distinct order after all, but part of an existing lineage. The other, Siphoniulida, was finally placed among its closest relatives on the millipede evolution timeline.
Colonizing an alien Earth
The analysis revealed that millipedes may have originated nearly 460 million years ago — roughly 35 million years before the oldest known millipede fossils and much earlier than previously believed.The biggest surprise was just how ancient some of these lineages turned out to be.
Associate Professor Paul Marek.
Back then, life on Earth looked dramatically different. Marek said millipedes helped pioneer life on land by breaking down organic material and recycling nutrients in some of the planet's first ecosystems.There were no vertebrates, no trees, no leaves, no flowering plants, no plants with seeds. Millipedes were feeding on decaying mosses, decomposed slime, and primordial gunk on the surface of the Earth.
Associate Professor Paul Marek.
The completed family tree also helped reveal when one of millipedes' most important adaptations first emerged.
They made the first chemical weapons. They're little chemical factories.
Associate Professor Paul Marek.
The study traces those chemical defenses to about 260 million years ago, providing the clearest picture yet of when millipedes first developed them.
Unheralded heroes of the ecosystem
Today, millipedes remain among nature's most important detritivores, breaking down decaying plant material and returning nutrients to ecosystems.
It's really kind of puzzling that they have such an important function in the ecosystem, and yet they're so poorly known.
Associate Professor Paul Marek.
For all that scientists have learned, millipedes still hold many new discoveries. Scientists have described more than 14,000 millipede species worldwide, but experts estimate there could be tens of thousands still undiscovered. Marek and his students have helped identify new millipedes in locations ranging from Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus to the city of Los Angeles.
For a new generation of millipede researchers like Vasquez-Valverde, that's part of what makes the animals so compelling.
There is all this potential for discovery. It keeps me wondering what else we're going to find.
Dr. Luisa F. Vasquez-Valverde.
The research, funded by the National Science Foundation, also included scientists from the Field Museum of Natural History, Hampden-Sydney College, Universidad de La Laguna, Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, the Australian National Insect Collection, West Virginia University, and Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Hidalgo.
Publication:
Yet again, the real world refuses to behave as creationists need it to behave. Instead of neat, separately created “kinds”, millipedes fall into a branching pattern of relatedness, exactly as common descent predicts. Their history is not a collection of disconnected acts of manufacture, but a long evolutionary story written in DNA, anatomy, fossils and geological time.
The significance of this paper is not merely that two obscure groups of millipedes have now found their proper place in the family tree. It is that their placement only makes sense within an evolutionary framework. The researchers did not need to assume magic, invoke a designer, or rescue a collapsing theory. They used the normal tools of modern biology — comparative genomics, morphology, fossil calibration and phylogenetic analysis — and the result was another small but important piece of the great evolutionary jigsaw dropping neatly into place.
Creationism, by contrast, contributes nothing to this work. It predicts no hidden relationships, supplies no dates, explains no nested hierarchies, and offers no method by which scientists could have found where these animals belong. Its only role, as usual, is to complain after the event that the evidence should not mean what it plainly means.
For a group of animals that has been quietly recycling dead plant material for hundreds of millions of years, millipedes have now performed one more useful ecological service: they have helped to recycle yet another creationist claim into intellectual compost.
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