'Primeval' Preview: Attack of the giant spiders

This week on Primeval, the team battles giant spiders - and Stephen comes face-to-face with a giant centipede.

Read on to find out about the real-life inspirations behind this week's beasts.



The giant spiders appear in an abdandoned tunnel off the London Underground after an anomaly opens to the Carboniferous swamps 300 million years ago. The spiders are boosted to these sizes by the oxygen rich atmosphere of the Carboniferous which also fills the tunnels.

These are very primitive relatives of modern spiders – they have no web or venom but they do have two enormous pincers, like modern day camel spiders.

These creatures are based on rather fragmentary fossils of ‘large spiders’ found in the coal swamps from the Carboniferous. For a long time there was a fossil called Megarachnid or ‘giant spider’, which a scientist thought was a 1 metre-wide spider, but this has just recently been reclassified as a type of sea scorpion.



Next through the anomaly is the Arthropleura which, at six metres long, looks like a giant centipede and is easily provoked into attack. It has two enormous jaws which can inject lethal venom into its victim - as Stephen discovers first hand.

This creature is based on a real group of animals called the arthropleurids that are most closely related to centipedes and millipedes. Fossils of the real ones have been found to grow to over 3 metres and look a bit like giant wood lice. Although the head of one of these creatures has never been found they are thought to have been harmless detritus eaters.

Primeval airs Saturday at 7pm on ITV1.