Pseudochactas mischi, a living fossil discovered in Afghanistan

A new scorpion species discovered in Afghanistan

The discovery of the enigmatic Pseudochactas ovchinnikovi Gromov, 1998 from Central Asia and a new family, Pseudochactidae, was undoubtedly one of the most important discoveries in scorpion systematic in recent times. Now a second species of this genus has been described from south-central Afghanistan .
The scorpion Pseudochactas mischi, named after M.Misch, who collected that new species, lives like the other Pseudochatae from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in humid ground and is considered to be a relict of a period, when the first invertebrates left water to conquer land.
The discovered specimen shares so many primitive characters with carbon scorpion fossils, which are not know from living scorpions

http://scorpion-files.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-species-of-pseudochactas-from.html



Now the officially published PDF file with the description and biogeography of the Pseudochactas mischi

http://www.science.marshall.edu/fet/...s%20mischi.pdf

very interesting thanks for posting

Impressive Michael! And how lucky you are with this discovery, you have your name etched in scorpion history. Very nice!

Woah first time seeing this thread amazing!

Yes I thought so too, a new species, and considered a living fossil.
Quite an amazing find, which can show us much regarding evolutionary development of scorpions. I wanted to bump this topic a little, I think it would be a shame if this thread remained in the dust.

I agree Michel did us proud.

Nice!

thank you guys, meanwhile I have discovered some other new species, as the very first scorpion of Norther Viet Nam. The Euscorpiops thaomischi, published by Frantisek.

Some other species from Afghanistan are under Revision and will be published soon

This one right here.