Rare Insect Found in Arkansas Grocery Identified as Species From Jurassic Period

A grocery store in Arkansas has a rare insect species from the Jurassic period.

For several years, a researcher specializing in insects has misidentified a specimen he collected in an Arkansas grocery store. Now, Michael Skvarla, the director of the Insect Identification Lab at Penn State University, has just realized that the species dated back to the Jurassic period.

Collecting a Specimen from the Jurassic Period

Skvarla recounted how he was walking into the Walmart branch in Arkansas in 2012 to buy milk when he saw a huge insect by the side of the grocery. Back then, he was a student in Fayetteville.

The would-be-professor thought the insect looked interesting so he collected it. He even claims that he went on to shop in the grocery with the insect between his fingers

When Skvarla got home, he mounted the insect and for almost a decade, did not think much of it.

Although he initially misidentified the rare insect, he would soon realize the species as he taught a Penn State online course in 2020. The specimen turned out to be a Polystoechotes punctata, better known as a giant lacewing. The insect species date back to the Jurassic period, which is about 150 million years ago.

Rare Giant Lacewing

This discovery was the first time that the species was ever documented in Arkansas. It is also the first time that a giant lacewing was recorded in North America within the past 50 years.

The discovery of the giant lacewing was the first recorded in North America in 50 years and the first time the species used to be quite common in the United States. However, it mysteriously disappeared from the Eastern US.

The press release published on the Penn State website outlined how Skvarla made the discovery during an online lab course.

Codey Mathis, a Penn State doctoral candidate in entomology, said that the professor was talking about the specimen under his microscope, describing what he saw when Skvarla suddenly stops.

They realized that the insect specimen was not what it was previously believed to be at all. It was, in fact, an actual specimen of a super rare giant lacewing.

Dicovery High

Mathis claims that the feeling of excitement upon the moment of realization does not dim and that it was gratifying: the feeling of discovering something in the middle of an online laboratory course.

The insect has been deposited by Skvarla into the Entomological Museum at Penn State for further studies. He hopes that the culprit behind the disappearance of the species from the East US could be identified.

The insect had a wingspan of 50 millimeters. Skvarla later pointed out that entomology can function as a leading indicator when it comes to studying ecology. He continued to say that discovering the insect in a region where it has not been seen for more than 50 years is an indication of the expanses of the environment, Fox News reports.

According to Skvarla, the insect specimen was previously incorrectly labeled in his private collection as an "antlion" because it had similar features. This was also noted in the paper that he and several colleagues recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.