Typhloperipatus williamsoni:
A team of researchers recently reported rediscovering a long-lost species of the velvet worm, named Typhloperipatus williamsoni, one of the oldest living fossils in the world, after 111 years.
- It is an ancient velvet worm species (phylum Onychophora), one of the oldest living fossils in the world.
- Onychophora is a very old group, easily older than 350 million years.
- It has only two families and not more than 200 species. The diversity is very less.
- These were evolving almost simultaneously with dinosaurs. When the mass extinction happened, probably a lot of them were wiped out.
- T. williamsoni was rediscovered after 111 years from the Siang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh.
- T. williamsoni was first collected during the “Abor expedition” by Stanley Kemp, the erstwhile superintendent of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and his team in December 1911 in Siang Valley.
- Since Kemp’s discovery, there have been no documented records of it from India.
