Life on earth began in... Stonehaven

IT has gone down in history as the town that invented the deep-fried Mars bar and the fountain pen, but now it appears a windswept Scottish coastal town is no less than the cradle of civilisation.

Scientists have been left slack-jawed with wonder at the discovery that life as we know it began in Stonehaven after a fossil picked up in the town last year was confirmed as the oldest air-breathing creature ever discovered.

The millipede is less than 1cm long but lived around 420 million years ago, when Aberdeenshire was part of a giant continent spanning the equator.

The find is enormously significant because it is the earliest evidence of a creature living on dry land rather than in the oceans. The Stonehaven millipede is 20 million years older than anything previously found on terra firma and has forced scientists to adjust their understanding of when life forms crawled from the sea and land life as we know it began.

It is also a welcome boost to the collective self-esteem of Stonehaven, whose 10,000 residents were resigned to being forever blamed for giving the world deep-fried confectionery.

Michael Newman, a local bus driver and amateur paleontologist, made the discovery while walking on a beach near the town last year. Knowing the find was possibly of interest but having no idea how important it was, he handed the fossil to the National Museums of Scotland.

Together with experts at Yale University, they spent months examining the millipede, which they found was covered in breathing holes and must have lived on dry land.

Isotope tests on seeds from prehistoric plants trapped in the rock with the fossil proved the creature lived about 420 million years ago.

At this time, Stonehaven is believed to have been part of a giant continent known as Larussia or the Old Red Sandstone Continent, which incorporated parts of modern-day Europe, Siberia and North America.

Unlike the typically dreich weather the fishing town frequently experiences today, 420 million years ago baking tropical sun would have pounded the rocky expanse. The millipedes would have feasted on moss and early plant life that grew only a few inches off the ground.

Dr Heather Wilson, from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University, said the insect could have colonised the continent and spread to other areas.

"These are very advanced millipedes and very well adapted to their life on land, and it suggests the ecosystem was more developed than we previously thought," she said.

"It was assumed that it was much later before there were enough plants to support land-based life.

"Most millipedes need fairly moist areas and probably the spread of the millipedes was right across the Old Red Sandstone Continent, which was near the equator and was probably sub-tropical.

"It could be that they actually evolved on that continent and then spread out, but we won’t know until we find another preserved fossil like this one."

Geographical conditions in the north-east of Scotland make the area a rich picking for fossil hunters. The area is surrounded by a tectonic plate line known as the Highland Boundary Fault.

While layers of sediment have built up evenly over millions of years in more stable areas, the shifting process around the fault causes sediment to build up unevenly over the millennia, meaning extremely old fossils are closer to the surface.

Michael Newman, the fossil hunter who discovered the millipede, said he has been "bashing away" at rocks for the past 12 years.

The 36-year-old developed an interest in paleontology at university and has amassed a collection of 2,000 fossils at his home in Kemnay, Aberdeenshire. He discovered the fossil in a rock on the foreshore at Cowie Harbour, to the north of Stonehaven.

He said wryly: "The first creature crawled out of the water in Stonehaven. How appropriate.

"It is known as being an important area, but it has only recently been re-dated as being a lot older than originally thought.

"I wanted to go to the Stonehaven area because many scientists think it was older than previously thought and I wanted to try my luck. I knew that the stuff found there could now be important.

"This is the best area in the world for early animal fossils. It has got far more fossil sites and many of great importance. It has got more than the US and Russia put together."

The scientists have now named the fossil Pneumodesmus newmani, in honour of Newman. Pneumo comes from the Greek word for air or breath.

Last night, the residents of Stonehaven insisted life had moved on significantly since Pneumodesmus newmani crawled across the earth.

Asked how she felt about the area possibly giving birth to land-based life, art gallery owner Kathleen Leiper said: "You can definitely say things have progressed since then. It sounds like quite an important thing to me but I don’t know how it would affect us.

"Hopefully it would lead to more fossils being found and perhaps a few more visitors coming into the town."

Her husband Denis joked: "I wouldn’t have thought it mattered. There are enough fossils here already."

Douglas Ewen, manager of Charles McHardy’s butchers in the town’s main street, said: "It’s news to me, but it is another claim to fame for Stonehaven. I have never heard that the area was well-known for fossils.

"I don’t think it will make a huge difference to the people here though."

George Swapp, councillor for Mearns area where the fossil was found, hoped that the find could raise the historic profile of the area.

"We certainly get geologists through over the years exploring the resources but I never imagined they would find something so important.

"Stonehaven has got a lot of things going for it already such as the harbour and the leisure facilities and one more thing of interest can only be good for the town."