Huge Jurassic-era bug found outside Arkansas Walmart in ‘super-rare’ discovery
No one knows why the giant lacewing disappeared from the area, but scientists have hypothesized that light pollution, invasive species or even forest fire suppression could be to blame.Misidentified by Skvarla, the historic rediscovery of the giant lacewing could have gone completely unnoticed.
Flashing forward to 2020, Skvarla, now a professor, was teaching a fourth-year entomology course at Penn State on Zoom after the world went into lockdown amid the pandemic. Since he was teaching from home, Skvarla used his own personal insect collection as samples to show students.Skvarla showed the class the giant bug he had collected at Walmart all those years ago, presenting it as an antlion. But as Skvarla was explaining the insect’s features to his students, he noticed something was wrong. The characteristics he was describing didn’t match the label.
“We were watching what Dr. Skvarla saw under his microscope and he’s talking about the features and then just kinda stops,” said Codey Mathis, a PhD candidate in entomology at Penn State. “We all realized together that the insect was not what it was labelled and was in fact a super-rare giant lacewing.“I still remember the feeling. It was so gratifying to know that the excitement doesn’t dim, the wonder isn’t lost. Here we were making a true discovery in the middle of an online lab course.
Skvarla and his colleagues performed molecular DNA analyses on the giant lacewing specimen to confirm its true identity. He has since published a paper about the discovery in theThe giant lacewing has been transferred to the Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State, where scientists and students will be able to access it for further study.
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