| “ | Okay Carboniferous, so it's probably an Arthropleurid. That's a centipede on steroids, basically. | „ |
| ~ Connor describing the Arthropleura |
Arthropleura or Arthropleurids are antagonists in Primeval. It is a giant relative of centipedes and millipedes that lived during the Carboniferous period and ended up residing in London Underground after traveling through an Anomaly.
Biography[]
One specimen of Arthropleura came through an Anomaly into the London Underground in the present beneath Arsenal Station. It ended up biting and poisoning a pest controller. The same creature latter attacked Nick Cutter, Stephen Hart and Abby Maitland at the Anomaly site the next day, but the three all escaped. Later, when Stephen returned to the Anomaly site to find Cutter, the Arthropleura attacked him again. At first, Stephen managed to fend it off with fire, but the Arthropleura was ultimately able to bite and poison him. Afterwards, the Arthropleura burrowed through the walls into an electrics bunker.
Cutter, Connor and Tom Ryan followed the Arthropleura's burrow to the electrical room. When Connor accidentally alerted the Arthropleura by knocking over a stool, the creature attacked them and bit Cutter on the wrist (but failed to poison him due to a protective armband). Connor tried to fend the Arthropleura off with a metal stool, which got jammed between the creature's pincers. While trying to shake the stool loose, the Arthropleura accidentally smashed it into an electrical box, electrocuting it. Burnt and weakened, the Arthropleura then fell from the floor it was on, to its death.
Another Arthropleura was captured by Oliver Leek's organisation and put in Leek's Creature Prison as part of his creature army. When the Creature Prison's security system failed, the Arthropleura and the other creatures were freed and ran amok in the bunker. The Arthropleura presumably died after Nick, Stephen and Helen Cutter lured the creatures back to the cage room with the food siren and locked the creatures inside so that they would kill each other.
Appearance[]
The body of the Arthopleura was composed of thirty armoured plates, which each had a pair of legs under them, and its body was about six metres long. According to Connor Temple, Arthropleura's diet would have consisted of dead wood and leaves. Arthropleura was practically blind, but had a good sense of smell and touch through which to detect other animals. Connor also stated that Arthropleura was a timid creature, but the Arthropleura encountered in the London Underground was highly aggressive and could be easily provoked into attacking. Claudia Brown jokingly speculated that the Underground Arthropleura's aggression was due to a personality disorder.
Arthropleura possessed a deadly venom, injected into a victim through a long, thin, metallic-looking tube located behind its mandibles, in a similar manner to an insect bite. When a large mammal such as a human was poisoned by an Arthropleura, the venom would slowly attack their central nervous system, putting the bitten victim into a state of uncontrollable shaking and convulsion very shortly after being bitten, and rendering them barely able to move, before they lost consciousness after a while.
An antivenin could be derived from pure samples of Arthropleura venom, but without this antidote, poisoned humans would have a zero chance of survival, dying a matter of hours after being bitten. If one did survive and recover from an Arthropleura's venomous bite, then they would still be left with short-term memory loss.
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 Villains
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Primeval Primeval: New World
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