This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A giant isopod from Puerto Rico, rediscovered in the depository of the University of Tübingen's Paleontological Collection, has turned out to be a previously unknown species. Its discoverers—paleontology student and isopod expert Benedikt Kästle and the Paleontological Collection's curator, Dr.
Ingmar Werneburg of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen—named the new Bathynomus species tuebingoborikensis after their university town and the Indigenous Taíno name for Puerto Rico, Boríken. Their study and description of the newly discovered species are expected to help scientists understand the evolution of all deep-sea isopods. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Giant isopods of the genus Bathynomus are found in all of the world's oceans and can grow up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and weigh several kilograms. These crustaceans are thus among the largest invertebrates. They inhabit the sea to depths as great as 2,500 meters (8,200 feet), where they live as omnivores.
In shape, these marine giant isopods resemble woodlice, the much smaller land isopods found in caves and damp basements. Their bodies are encased in an exoskeleton of calcareous, scalelike segments. The Tübingen isopod—a specimen of a species still living today—was acquired in the 1980s by the Tübingen paleontologist professor Dolf Seilacher (1925–2014) at a research station in Puerto Rico and brought to Tübingen for educational purposes.
Kästle and Werneburg examined the dried specimen using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, identified it as a representative of a new species and compared its anatomy to that of other giant isopods around the world. A phylogenetic analysis revealed that the entire Bathynomus genus likely originated in what is now the Gulf of Mexico during the Miocene, more than 15 million years ago. "At that time, the Isthmus of Panama was open, leaving a strait between North and South America, and the marine animals were able to spread westward, initially as far as Japan," says Werneburg.
In the Indian and Pacific oceans, they diversified into many new species. "This gave rise to the so-called 'giant' isopods that are up to 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) long, and the 'supergiants' with a body length of more than 15 centimeters (5.9 inches)," adds Kästle. The giant isopods spread to Australia, East Africa and, before the collision of the Arabian and African continental plates, also to Europe.
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