Two Rare Millipedes in Amber

With extremely rare exception, the animal inclusions in amber are members of Phylum Arthropoda. Of these, the vast preponderance are members of Subphylum Insecta (one of the the many Orders of insects), that are evolutionary cousins to Class Myriapoda (that includes Diplopoda, the millipedes, and Chilopoda, the centipedes), as well as SubPhylum Crustacea that includes shrimps and crabs. The spiders (in Subphylum Chelicerata), while fairly uncommon in amber, are more distant in their genetic relationship to insects than are Myriapoda. The millipedes are fairly rare, and the centipedes are very rare in amber.

In this amber we have a pair of millipedes each a 6 mm. Their graveyard company includes 9 members of Order Isoptera (the termites).

This very clear hand-polished amber is 48 mm high, and weighs 15.7 grams.

C9g