Talk about a prehistoric plot twist. A 324-million-year-old fossil that spent decades gathering dust in the basement of a California museum turned out to be one of the first known insects on Earth, rewriting the evolutionary history of life on Earth. For 40 years, the creepy prehistoric crawler (specimen #28852) remained hidden in a drawer at the San Diego Museum of Natural History, labeled Tesnusocaris goldichi, another common ancient shrimp-like crustacean. Sign up for the California Morning Report newsletter The biggest news, opinions and culture shaping California right now. Thanks for signing up! People view artifacts at the San Diego Museum of Natural History ahead of National Fossil Day. Facebook/@SanDiegoNaturalHistoryMuseum Turns out the scientists were dead wrong. Thanks to an eagle-eyed Cambridge University PhD student who crossed the pond to inspect the forgotten slab, the museum gave the artifact a new label: Chosha praecursor. It is not a crustacean. It’s an insect. The surprising reclassification officially crowns the prehistoric creature among the “undisputed oldest insects” ever discovered, the San Diego Union Tribune reported. The discovery reportedly opened the long and mysterious “hexapod gap,” which is a 60-million-year blackout in the fossil record during which the first insects apparently disappeared from Earth. Museum staff hold fossils in honor of National Fossil Day. Facebook/@SanDiegoNaturalHistoryMuseum The breakthrough came when Cambridge doctoral researcher Erik Tihelka saw images of the long-overlooked fossil in a textbook and booked a ticket to Southern California for a closer look, according to the San Diego Union Tribune. The creepy crawler had classic insect features, including six legs attached to its thorax, an egg-laying organ, and a tail-like filament extending from its end, while also boasting numerous additional pairs of paddle-shaped legs protruding from its abdomen – a crustacean characteristic. Museum visitors look at the fossils. Facebook/@SanDiegoNaturalHistoryMuseum Scientists reportedly believe the creature may have used its extra legs to glide through the water, offering a rare glimpse into how ancient aquatic ancestors evolved into the insects that crawl and fly around the planet today. The specimen originally arrived in the Golden State in 1985, after being brought from a dig in Brewster County, Texas. It was classified as a crustacean in 1991. Now it’s getting the rock star treatment it deserves. Museum bosses removed the evolutionary relic from the basement and stored it safely inside a glass display case on the museum’s lower level, where visitors can gawk at the creature bridging the gap between sea and land. “There’s nothing that makes a curator happier than having a researcher use the collection,” Tom Deméré, the museum’s director of paleontology, told the San Diego Union Tribune. “For a specimen that has been in the collection for 40 years to have a new life in the scientific literature and, hopefully, in the minds of the general public, shows that new discoveries can be made.” Download the California Post app, follow us on social media, and subscribe to our newsletters California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
