An extremely rare crab, known as the Louisea yabassi, identified by its brown and rusty colour, has been rediscovered in Southwest Cameroon after been thought extinct for over 110 years.
During 2019 and 2020, Dr. Pierre A. Mvogo Ndongo, a carcinologist and lecturer at the University of Douala in Cameroon, set off his with his team in the forests of Ebo, in search for the species, after previously locating other species of crab in the same area. Much to the teams delight, during their 2019 expedition, they managed to discover over 20 individuals in and around two streams flowing into the Dibamba River in Cameroon’s Littoral region. A further 15 were located in the same area in the 2020 expedition.
A new species of crab that scientists say is the “strangest crab that has ever lived” has been discovered in Colombia and the United States. The prehistoric crab dates back to 95 million years ago and scientists say it defies all the normal crab features. The new species, named Callichimaera perplexa, has bent claws, big eyes with no sockets, an exposed tail and leg-like mouthparts.
“We started looking at these fossils and we found they had what looked like the eyes of a larva, the mouth of a shrimp, claws of a frog crab, and the carapace of a lobster,” said Javier Luque, postdoctoral paleontologist at the University of Alberta and Yale University, in a statement from the University of Alberta. “We have an idea of what a typical crab looks like — and these new fossils break all those rules.”