Man Discovers New Life Form at South African Truck Stop
Like many biologists, the German biologist Oliver Zompro spends thousands of hours looking at specimens of dead animals. He found his first new species when he was twenty. By the age of thirty he had named dozens of wild new forms. While other people around him did crossword puzzles and drank lattes, he explored the world, one animal at a time. Then, one day, things changed. He was looking through specimens when he found something more interesting than anything he had ever seen before. It was a fossil that looked like a cross between two different kinds of animals. It had the wrong mix of parts. It was - he would come to convince himself - a single individual of an entirely new order of beasts. Read more
Mantophasmatodea is a suborder of carnivorous African insects discovered in 2002, originally considered to be a new order, but since relegated to subordinal status, and comprising the single family Mantophasmatidae. The most common vernacular name for this order is gladiators, although they also are called rock crawlers, heelwalkers, mantophasmids, and coloquially, mantos. Read more