New species of ground beetle described from a 147-year-old specimen

(Pensoft Publishers) While new species are most commonly described based on recent field collections, undertaken at poorly explored places, some are identified in museum collections, where they have spent decades before being recognized. Such is the case of an unusually large and likely extinct ground beetle from Samoa found at the Mus é um national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. Now, a century and a half later, this beetle is finally described in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - January 10, 2017 Category: Biology Source Type: news