New critters found in Israeli cave...

[The Chairman]

Reuters:

Updated: 2 hours, 39 minutes ago
JERUSALEM - Israeli scientists say they have discovered a prehistoric ecosystem dating back millions of years.

The discovery was made in a cave near the central Israeli city of Ramle during rock drilling at a quarry. Scientists were called in and soon found eight previously unknown species of crustaceans and invertebrates similar to scorpions.

“Until now, eight species of animals were found in the cave, all of them unknown to science,” Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Wednesday.

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[AZ Desert Diver]

Very cool!

 

[archman]

This actually isn't particularly novel... relict cave faunas with ancient, endemic species have been routinely discovered over the last 20-30 years. Our own super-diver Tom Iliffe has been one of the leaders in this work. He's always finding loopy stuff.
http://www.tamug.edu/cavebiology/index2.html

What's odd is that this merits a press conference. That's not standard procedure for scientific reporting. I'm wondering if the Israeli's found some critters that are weird even for the regular cave biologists. The only "scorpion-related" taxon that I can think of that might merit such a hubbub would be the Eurypterida. If living specimens were found from that long-extinct lineage, that would be a truly monumental discovery.