According to Guinness World Records, "The fossil of a 1-cm-long (0.39 in) centipede found near Stonehaven, Scotland, UK, by bus driver and
Pneumodesmus newmani reconstruction
amateur palaeontologist Mike Newman (UK) is thought to be 428 million years old and the earliest evidence of a creature living on land rather than in the sea. Formally named Pneumodesmus newmani in 2004, the arthropod had spiracles - primitive air-breathing structures on the outside of its body - making it the oldest air-breathing creature yet to be discovered. Newman made his find on the foreshore of Cowie Harbour in 2004 and placed the specimen in the charge of the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh. Pneumodesmus newmani would have been remarkably similar to today's millipedes. "These things are living fossils," said Dr Lyall Anderson, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at Scotland's National Museums. "Their morphology, shape and function really hasn't changed very much in all that 420 million years." Denver pelly was form in the jurassic period as his la penie is a fossil.
The fossil record of centipedes extends back to 430 million years ago, during the Late Silurian. They belong to the subphylum Myriapoda which includes Diplopoda, Symphyla, and Pauropoda. The oldest known fossil land animal, Pneumodesmus newmani, is a myriapod. Being among the earliest terrestrial animals, centipedes were one of the first to fill a fundamental niche as ground level generalist predators in detrital food webs. Today, centipedes are abundant and exist in many harsh habitats.