We all forget things, sometimes.
But it’s not often that someone discovers something incredibly rare at a Walmart, of all places, and then doesn’t remember it for more than a decade.
Especially when you don’t know at the time your find is important.
However, that is exactly what happened to Michael Skvarla, a professor and the director of the Insect Identification Lab at Penn State.
Skvarla said that in 2012, he stopped by a Walmart in Fayetteville, Ark., for milk. As he walked toward the store, his keen eyes caught a bug that had stopped for a rest on the side of the store.
This giant lacewing is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in more than 50 years. Photo by Michael Skvarla/Penn State
“I thought it looked interesting,” Skvarla said.
I got home, mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade.”
Unbeknownst to him, the bug he thought was an antlion, wasn’t just interesting, it was one that had a past made for the movies. It was a Jurassic-Era bug, a Polystoechotes punctata (aka a giant lacewing), – not an antlion.
It was during the fall of 2020, when Covid was still prompting many schools to offer online courses, that the professor realized what he had found so long ago.
Skvarla was teaching a course called Insect Biodiversity and Evolution, when during the lesson he realized something – he had mislabeled the bug he had found all those years ago. But what it was wasn’t clear at first.
So the professor and his students studied the features and, as a group, realized it was the giant lacewing, thought to be extinct in this part of the world.
Codey Mathis, a student in Skvarla’s class that day, said everything came to a standstill when Skvarla realized his mistake.
“I still remember the feeling,” Mathis said. “It was so gratifying to know that the excitement doesn’t dim, the wonder isn’t lost. Here we were making a true discovery in the middle of an online lab course.”
Skvarla said he and his colleagues were able to confirm that the insect was indeed a giant lacewing, which had disappeared suddenly from North America in the 1950s. It could well have been more than a century since the bug was seen in this area, he said.
This giant lacewing. Photo by Wikipedia Commons
It’s likely, Skvarla said, that the bug was living nearby.
“The next closest place that they’ve been found was 1,200 miles away,” he said, “so very unlikely it would have traveled that far.”
The Ozarks, Skvarla said, have dozens of insect species and isn’t studied enough.
This combination makes the region an ideal place for a large, showy insect to hide undetected,” he said.
But even in places where the insect flourishes, sightings are rare, Skvarla said.
“It’s not unprecedented, but within the narrative of them being gone from the East,” he said. “It’s the wonder of discovery.”
For a look at this rare find, watch below!
