UpbeatA giant woodlouse relative sat in a drawer for 40 years — it was a new species all along
The new species was hiding in a drawer. A giant isopod — a deep-sea relative of the woodlouse that can grow up to 50 centimetres (about 20 inches) long — was collected in Puerto Rico in the 1980s and brought to the University of Tübingen in Germany for teaching. Paleontology student Benedikt Kästle and curator Dr Ingmar Werneburg have now shown it is a previously unknown species, naming it Bathynomus tuebingoborikensis after Tübingen and Boríken, the Indigenous Taíno name for Puerto Rico. Their description, published in Scientific Reports, helps trace the evolution of all deep-sea giant isopods.
The upbeat factora new species, discovered not on an expedition but in a museum drawer — named for two homes at once.
SDG 14 · Life below water
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