ATREE researchers rediscover long-lost species after 111 years

Rediscovery of ancient velvet worm species in India after 111 years sheds light on evolutionary history and biogeographic mysteries.

A team of researchers at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and The Environment (ATREE) had reported rediscovering a long-lost species of the velvet worms (phylum Onychophora), one of the oldest living fossils in the world, after 111 years.

Named Typhloperipatus williamsoni, the ancient species — estimated to be around 220 million years old — was spotted by the team in the Siang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh and the rediscovery was published in the Journal of Natural History. The study provides the first molecular data for the species. 

According to the paper, 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 has been no documented records of it from India. 

Between 2021 and 2023, the ATREE team comprising Surya Narayanan, D.R. Priyadarsanan, A.P. Ranjith, R. Sahanashree and Aravind Neelavar Ananthram, along with the National Geographic Society and Fellis Creation, followed the trails of the Abor expedition. This time, the researchers found two individuals of T. williamsoni for the first time since its description. Interestingly, the specimens were spotted under stones while looking for ants in pre-monsoon season.

“Onycophora 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,” explained Mr. Narayanan, lead authour of the paper. 

“These were evolving almost simultaneously with dinosaurs. When the mass extinction happened, probably a lot of them were wiped out. What we see today is mostly those species which escaped extinction.”

The rediscovery of T. williamsoni, which was thought of as extinct, also could help solve a biogeographic mystery, he noted.