UC Berkeley
Arthropods can be divided into five major groups, each with its own distinctive characteristics.
The first land animal wasn’t a slippery amphibian or a giant dragonfly, but a myriapod. Fossil evidence suggests that these wriggly critters climbed out of the water 490-443 million years ago — about 200 million years before the first dinosaurs evolved!
To explore these groups, just click on the names below:
- insects (including moths)
- chelicerates (including spiders and scorpions)
- crustaceans (including crayfish and barnacles)
- myriapods (including millipedes)
- trilobites (which are now extinct)
Despite their differences, these groups inherited certain “arthropod traits” from a common ancestor, and they are all part of the arthropod lineage.