They find a giant flying insect that belongs to a species from the Jurassic era in an Arkansas Walmart

The giant lacewing, or Polystoechotes punctata, belongs to a family of insects that predates the dinosaurs.

After disappearing in the 1950s, a specimen was rediscovered in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

(CNN) --

An insect found on the side of a department store in Fayetteville, Arkansas, has been identified as the species

, which belongs to a family of insects that predates the dinosaurs.

Michael Skvarla, director of the Insect Identification Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University, saw the Jurassic-era creature, also known as the giant lacewing, on a shopping trip in 2012, when he was a doctoral student in entomology at the University. from Arkansas.

"I remember it vividly, because I was walking to Walmart to buy milk and I saw this huge insect on the side of the building," Skvarla said in a statement.

“I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers.

Came home, rode it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade."

Skvarla had initially misidentified the lacewing as an ant lion, a dragonfly-like insect that shares certain characteristics, including long transparent wings, with the lacewing.

But after presenting the insect in his online entomology course in the fall of 2020, he realized that what he had all those years was something much rarer and more impressive.

He conducted further DNA analysis to confirm the insect's identity, and the giant lacewing has now become part of the collection at the Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State.

The disappearance of the giant lacewing

The giant lacewing disappeared in the 1950s from eastern North America, where it was once widespread, according to Skvarla's co-authored paper published in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington.

Scientists thought that the species had been completely eliminated from the region.

The recent discovery of the lacewing in Arkansas is the first record of the species in the state.

"Entomology can function as a leading indicator for ecology," Skvarla said in the statement.

"The fact that this insect has been seen in a region where it has not been seen in over half a century tells us something broader about the environment."

While the mysterious disappearance of the insect is suspected to have been due to efforts to put out natural wildfires in eastern North America, according to the document, the biggest mystery is how the insect ended up in a superstore in an urban area of ​​Arkansas.

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“It could have been 100 years since (the species) was in this area, and it's been years since it was seen anywhere near it.

The next closest place they were found was almost 2,000 kilometers away, so it is highly unlikely that they traveled that far," Skvarla said.

She suggested that the lacewing was attracted to the lights and flew at least a few hundred meters from where she had been living.

Skvarla's find opened the door for future lacewing discoveries, as insect enthusiasts begin combing through their own collections and looking for the species in the wild in places they hadn't thought to look before, said manager Dr. Floyd Shockley. from collections of the entomology department of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

“Any time you find an insect species that is not in a place you are used to, that has many implications for our understanding of that species: the type of distribution it has, the type of ecosystem it might require to complete its life cycle. life," Shockley said.

"It means that something we thought was gone, at least from the eastern US, may still be there, and it's just hiding in little pockets."

Shockley also noted the importance of museum collections, such as the one at the Smithsonian or the one at Penn State, where the lacewing resides, as "they help capture different snapshots of biodiversity over time and allow us to see what's happening." and why is that so?

happening."

“Everybody always focuses on the big things: big birds and mammals and things like that.

But this is a world of insects.

… We just live off of it,” Shockley said.

“It's really important to have that kind of appreciation.

And one of the great things about insects is that there is so much diversity for you to appreciate, just in your backyard."