{"id":489898,"date":"2026-05-18T00:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T00:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/489898\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T00:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T00:55:10","slug":"scientists-discover-bizarre-100-million-year-old-insect-with-giant-claws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/489898\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover Bizarre 100-Million-Year-Old Insect With Giant Claws"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carcinonepa<\/a>Preserved in amber: the newly discovered bug species Carcinonepa libererrantes. Credit: Haug<\/p>\n

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown species of true bug that has claws.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amber from Myanmar\u2019s Kachin region has preserved many fossils that reveal the animal diversity of a Cretaceous forest ecosystem from about 100 million years ago. The deposit continues to produce species that were previously unknown to science.<\/p>\n

LMU<\/a> researchers have now identified the fossil of a true bug (Heteroptera) with a striking feature rarely seen in insects: large claws on its front legs that resemble the grasping limbs of crabs. These structures, called chelae, work like pincers or forceps and are extremely uncommon among insects.<\/p>\n

Claws reinvented<\/p>\n

\u201cPreviously, such chelae were known from only three insect groups. This fossil, therefore, represents the fourth known case of these structures evolving independently in insects,\u201d explains Privatdozent Carolin Haug, zoologist at LMU\u2019s Faculty of Biology.<\/p>\n

Haug and her team, working with researchers from the University of Rostock and the University of Oulu in Finland, examined the fossil using micro-computed tomography. This allowed them to reconstruct and study its anatomy in 3D. The findings have now been published in the journal Insects.<\/p>\n

\"CT<\/a>CT scan of the newly discovered insect species with its distinctive claws. Credit: Haug<\/p>\n

The researchers also carried out a quantitative morphological analysis comparing the shapes of more than 2,000 chelae and similar grasping structures from living and extinct species. Their analysis showed that the fossil true bug\u2019s chelae are clearly different from those found in other insects. Similar forms are seen instead in more distantly related arthropods, including decapods (crabs, lobsters, shrimps, etc.) and tanaids.<\/p>\n

Water bugs in K-pop pose<\/p>\n

Because its anatomy was so distinctive, the researchers assigned the fossil true bug to a new genus and named the species Carcinonepa libererrantes. The genus name combines the Latinized Greek word for \u201ccrab\u201d (carcino-) with nepa, referring to Nepomorpha, the group of true water bugs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe species name libererrantes is a Latinization of the highly successful K-pop group Stray Kids,\u201d explains Carolin Haug. \u201cThe name seemed fitting because the posture of the fossil\u2019s chelae strongly resembles the group\u2019s trademark pose. Stray Kids, I should add, is the favorite band of one of the paper\u2019s authors, Fenja Haug.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the preserved body features, the researchers classified Carcinonepa libererrantes as a member of the true water bugs (Nepomorpha) within the true bugs (Heteroptera). Beyond its unusual front leg chelae, the fossil\u2019s body resembles modern members of Gelastocoridae, the group commonly known as toad bugs, which live as terrestrial predators.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe morphology of C. libererrantes suggests that this species had a similar lifestyle,\u201d observes Carolin Haug. \u201cWe can imagine it living in a Cretaceous forest, probably near the coast.\u201d The large chelae on its front legs were most likely used to capture small insects.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cA True Bug with a True but Unique Chela in 100 Million-Year-Old Amber\u201d by Carolin Haug, Fenja I. Haug, Marie K. H\u00f6rnig, Florian Braig and Joachim T. Haug, 16 April 2026, Insects.
DOI: 10.3390\/insects17040431<\/a><\/p>\n

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Follow us on Google<\/a> and Google News<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preserved in amber: the newly discovered bug species Carcinonepa libererrantes. Credit: Haug Scientists have discovered a previously unknown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,10925,8399,19,8102,17,188065,12151,133,18885],"class_list":["post-489898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-eire","tag-entomology","tag-fossils","tag-ie","tag-insect","tag-ireland","tag-ludwig-maximilian-university-of-munich","tag-paleontology","tag-science","tag-zoology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116592858636470058","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}