New Beetle Species Collected by Darwin 180-years ago Identified on His Birthday

A rare beetle species that was collected over two centuries ago by Charles Darwin has been successfully identified on Darwin's birthday.

Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, during one of his expedition in the year 1832, collected several fossils belonging to large mammals and other living organism from Bahia Blanca, Argentina. After more than 180 years, on Darwin's 205^th anniversary, scientists have discovered the genus of a rare beetle species he found then and named it 'Darwinilus sedarisi'.

The rare specimen, a species of rove beetles, was discovered by Dr. Stylianos Chatzimanolis, an entomologist at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, U.S.   Rove beetles are a group of insects that have over 57,000 described species. This specimen rediscovered in 2008, was considered lost for several years at the Natural History of Museum, London.

"I received on loan several insects from the Museum in London, and to my surprise I realized that one of them was collected by Darwin" said Dr. Chatzimanolis.  "Finding a new species is always exciting; finding one collected by Darwin is truly amazing."

The species is named after the naturalist Charles Darwin and author-performer David Sedaris.

"I spent many hours listening to Mr. Sedaris' audiobooks while preparing the specimens and the figures for this and other manuscripts," Chatzimanolis wrote.

Only two known specimens exist that belong to this species and both were collected before 1935. One of the two was discovered in Rio Cuarto, a city in Argentina's province of Cordoba, reports IB Times.

Dr. Chatzimanolis says that the habitat where the species were discovered has now been converted into agricultural fields. But he still hopes that this newly named species is not extinct.

According to LiveScience, the newly named species has a saw toothed antennae, metallic green head that is in a form of a hexagon.

The finding is published in the journal Zookeys.