168 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSETJM voi,. m 



As fragmentary as it is, our knowledge of neotropical centipedes 

 has seemed to some authorities to provide a measure of support for 

 various theories that postulate a southern intercontinental land 

 connection or continental driftings to explain a number of striking 

 fauna! and floral similarities between Africa and South America. 

 Some authorities are impressed with the fact that certain genera, 

 a few higher categories, and some species are known to occur either 

 only in the New World tropics and Africa or in those regions and in 

 Australia-New Zealand. For example, Schendylurus, represented 

 in this paper by a new species, has apparently quite similar species in 

 South Ameiica and Africa, especially in South Africa. Scolopocryptops 

 (formerly Otocryptops) ferruginea (Linne), a widespread West Indian 

 cryptopid, seems also common in Africa. For additional detailed 

 information the reader is referred to Attems (1926 and 1928) and to 

 a recent, infomiative account of Turk (1955). 



Verhoeff (1941) appeared to subscribe to the idea of a direct southern 

 land route of dispersal, whereas his contemporar}', Attems (1928, 

 p. 20), adopting what seems to me to be a less extreme viewpoint, 

 suggested that: "To explain this distribution wc need not recur to 

 the theory of continental bridges [or] a Brazilo-xVfrican continent; the 

 dispersal took place on the curve [from] South Africa [to] India, with 

 a branching off on one side on the Sunda Ai-chipelago to Australia, on 

 the other side by Eastern Asia to America. Later on the genera 

 died out again on the large part of this curve." 



Turk (1955), impressed with the heterogeneity as well as wdth the 

 farflung affinities of neotropical centipedes, proposed not one but 

 several explanations to account for the different faunal components. 

 Some genera, like Schendylurus and Otocryptops (= Scolopocryptops) , 

 he believed, are very old and represent an ancient adaptive radiation 

 that took place possibly' in IMesozoic times. This explanation is essen- 

 tially Attems' viewpoint. A second component, typified by Eibautia 

 and Schizorihautia, he believed may have arisen in tlie remote past 

 and then spread from a neotropical center to West Africa across 

 a connecting landbridge sometime during the Eocene-Miocene. 

 Finally he recognized a third (p. 499) component whose distributions 

 "foUow somewhat suspiciously closely the direction of the Peru 

 Current and South Equatoiial Current," and did not discount the 

 possibility that rafting transported if not the adults then conceivably 

 the hardier eggs from one land mass to another. 



I shall comment briefly upon each of these possibilities. Abundant 

 distributional evidence supports the contention that extensive and 

 probably rather regular exchange of chilopods occuiTed between Asia 

 and North America. Traffic in both directions must have taken place 

 during Tertiary times across the Bering Straits. There is no reason for 



