{"id":876772,"date":"2026-10-09T22:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T22:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876772\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T22:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T22:02:10","slug":"a-student-found-a-new-giant-isopod-that-had-been-mislabeled-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/876772\/","title":{"rendered":"A Student Found a New Giant Isopod That Had Been Mislabeled for Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

German paleontologist Dolf Seilacher had not yet won<\/a> his Crafoord\u2014the prestigious honor awarded by the same<\/a> Swedish academy that gives out the Nobel Prize\u2014when he was collecting specimens in Puerto Rico back in the 1980s. The research station had pulled a gigantic Bathynomus isopod, a huge bug-like crustacean roughly 12.7 inches (32.2 centimeters) long, up from a trap that had lain in wait 1,640 feet (500 meters) deep along the ocean floor.<\/p>\n

Seilacher, sadly, passed away in 2014, long before he or anyone else realized that this specimen was actually representative of a previously unknown species. Now, over three decades after it was dredged up from the Caribbean, T\u00fcbingen paleontology student Benedikt K\u00e4stle and the curator of the university\u2019s Paleontological Collection, Ingmar Werneburg, have finally given this creature a proper name. This roly-poly or pillbug-like giant isopod, long mislabelled as a Bathynomus giganteus has now been formally ID\u2019ed under the brand new species name, Bathynomus tuebingoborikensis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new species is very closely related to another giant species found off the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula in Mexico,\u201d K\u00e4stle said<\/a> in a statement, noting that this hefty isopod technically \u201cfalls into the category of \u2018colossogiants.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BathynomusDorsal (A) and ventral (B) views of the isopod, whose mouth region proved critical to its identification as a new species. The scale bar is equal to 1.97 inches (5 centimeters). Credit: K\u00e4stle, Werneburg Living large <\/p>\n

To get even more technical, giant undersea isopods really do stem from the same order of crustaceans as woodlice, like the tiny brickwork woodlouse<\/a> (Porcellio spinicornis) seen skulking around masonry and stonework across Europe and North America. But unlike those insect-like land crustaceans, which only grow between 0.4 and 0.6 inches (10 and 15 millimeters) long, species from the gigantic Bathynomus genus can reach up to 20 inches (50 centimeters)\u2014making them some of the largest invertebrates on Earth.<\/p>\n

These Starship Troopers-esque buggers can get heavy too: as much as 5.7 pounds (2.6 kilograms) in some<\/a> cases, enclosed within sturdy exoskeletons suitable for depths as far as 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) below sea level.<\/p>\n

According to Werneburg, the entire Bathynomus genus, which today can be found in oceans across the world, likely first took shape in the Gulf of Mexico during the Miocene epoch over 15 million years ago, not far from where B. tuebingoborikensis was found.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt that time, the Isthmus of Panama was open, leaving a strait between North and South America, and the marine animals were able to spread westward, initially as far as Japan,\u201d Werneburg explained in a statement.<\/p>\n

Prehistoric isopods took about another 10 million years, onward into the Miocene\u2013Pliocene boundary, to evolve into species near the sizes of today\u2019s largest representatives of the crustacean. As Earth cooled, so-called \u201cgiant\u201d isopod species from the Miocene, which only ever reached 5.9 inches (15 cm) in length, eventually gave rise to much larger cousins in the Indian and Pacific oceans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese veritable colossi grew to more than 25.2 centimeters (9.9 inches) in length and were physiologically perfectly adapted to the new climatic conditions,\u201d according to Werneburg.<\/p>\n

Big bug hunters <\/p>\n

K\u00e4stle and Werneburg turned to 3D imaging via micro-computed tomography\u00a0to take the granular slices of the T\u00fcbingen specimen needed to properly distinguish it from the other \u201ccolossogiants\u201d it had been mistaken for. The late Seilacher, in his day, was somewhat renowned<\/a> for making his landmark achievements without even the use of a computer, so it\u2019s perhaps no wonder that the subtle, but numerous, features that distinguish B. tuebingoborikensis failed to capture his attention.<\/p>\n

The micro-computed tomography \u201cpermitted the detailed observation of the mouthparts, which are often neglected in species descriptions of Bathynomus although this anatomical area is useful for the taxonomy of [aquatic isopods or] Cirolanidae,\u201d the pair wrote in their new study, published<\/a> Thursday in Scientific Reports.<\/p>\n

In a nod to the species\u2019 long journey, the researchers chose its name as a portmanteau of the indigenous Ta\u00edno name for Puerto Rico, Bor\u00edken, and the city of T\u00fcbingen, Germany, where Seilacher helped preserve the find for their unexpected rediscovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German paleontologist Dolf Seilacher had not yet won his Crafoord\u2014the prestigious honor awarded by the same Swedish academy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[232729,11347,177692,16086,79],"class_list":["post-876772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ct-scans","tag-marine-animals","tag-new-species","tag-paleontology","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}