But it wasn't seen again despite decades of searching by many scientists.
Until last fall.
A 28-year-old scientist from East Carolina University, Paul Marek, and his brother chanced upon it. They were exploring a lush valley of oak trees in San Benito County, known to be a biodiversity "hot spot."
"I practically fell over when I found it. It was extremely exhilarating," said Marek, who published the discovery in Thursday's issue of the journal
Nature.
Millipedes thrive around the world in temperate and tropical zones. They feed on plant material and tend to hide under moist soil, wood piles and rocks.
Marek isn't giving the exact location of his find for fear of people disrupting the ecosystem.
Over three days in the valley, he and his brother collected a dozen millipedes and painstakingly counted their legs under a microscope to confirm each millipede was a member of the same species. Of those captured, the leggiest were the females, with 662 to 666 legs.
The millipedes were brought back to Marek's lab in North Carolina where some were preserved for future DNA testing and others were shipped to the Field Museum in Chicago for study.
Darrell Ubick, an entomologist with the San Francisco-based California Academy of Sciences who unsuccessfully hunted for the millipede years ago, applauded the discovery.
"By rediscovering it, we add more pieces of the puzzle to understanding it," he said.
