Scientists Need Your Help: Identify This
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 1st, 2007
Have you seen anything like the above, ever? This crustacean, found in the marine environment off Walpole and Portland, Maine, is not like anything researchers have seen before. Can you assist them with identifying it? (Photo courtesy Casco Bay Estuary Partnership)
Reporter Ann S. Kim noted in The Maine Sunday Telegram on July 31, 2007, specifically about this unknown animal:
A crustacean the size of a grain of rice was among the hundreds of specimens that researchers gathered in recent days from docks and piers from Cape Cod to midcoast Maine.
The tiny crustacean, the marine version of a pill bug, didn’t seem like anything they had seen before in their search for invasive species in the area.
“If I can’t nail it down, I’ll bring in some colleagues,” said James Carlton, director of the Williams-Mystic Program, a maritime studies program in Connecticut. If the animal, which was found in Portland and Walpole, is not known in New England, Carlton said he’ll keep reaching out until he figures out what it is….
Carlton urged the public to report unfamiliar species to scientists or a nature center. Ideally, these surveys would be conducted every year to get a good sense of what’s going on in the coastal zone.
The researchers spent three days last week in Maine, where they collected specimens in Portland, South Portland, Walpole, Boothbay, Camden and Rockland.
The scientists are looking for non-native, invading species, but finding a new animal might be a result of their research, as well.
Does this yellow-and-brown marine sowbug-lookalike remind you of any animal you’ve seen during your shoreline walks, or as pictured in a zoology text?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
looks like a trilobite!
(or an otter in armor)
Sand flea?
I agree with the trilobite, I have many fossilized ones or their inprints, but my instant thought when I saw the picture was a rolly polly. HA. In other words a pill bug.
Well…isn’t there a marine sow-bug? I always thought there was. The only difference I can see would be the coloring and/or size. This thing is suppose to be really small? Well, no wonder they missed it. It probably has been there all along.
Marine pillbug. What do they need help with? Naming it or determining if it’s been there all along?
C’mon scientists, give us a CHALLENGE!
I can honestly say: It’s a bug….
Well, it looks like some species of fish lice. You know, those parasitic Crustaceans that plague certain species of fish. I didn’t think there would be interest in a creature like this.
Actually it’s a group of otters swimming after each other, creating the effect that it is a new and undiscovered species.
Looks a little like a sea roach (genus Ligia). Most species of that are bigger than a grain of rice, though. They’re usually about an inch. Good luck.
From the article: “Carlton urged the public to report unfamiliar species to scientists or a nature center.”
People have been doing just that.
The thing is, when they do, they’re often told:
“Well, the human mind can be very imaginative…play tricks on you….and so eye witness testimony is just not reliable….”
or
“…well, it’s more than likely just an escaped pet…”
or
“…you probably saw something else and you just think you saw a (insert cryptid)…”
or
“ha hah ha ha hee hee – you saw a what??? (turning to the door and yelling now) Hey Earl, hee hee, this guy says he saw a (insert cryptid)…”
Looks like a ladybug larva but with different coloration.
Looks like a short Centipede….
Looks like some kind of really small pillbug, or a larvae of another creature.
The only thing odd I see is the coloring. May just be a rare color morph of whatever it is. Like in African Clawed Frogs (i used to keep these) they are normally brownish/grayish but there is occasionally a ‘pinto’ colored one born (like this bug in the pic with his white-&-color-patches type pattern) which go for alot more money as they are a rarity.
So perhaps in other animals a rare pinto coloring is possible. Otherwise, aside from the patches, it looks like some kind of pillbug or larvae.
It’s cute though 🙂
Like saribou my first thought was trilobite. Looks like too many legs for an actual insect, arachnid or such.
Possible large Sea Louse.
I have a friend who is a marine biologist specialising in invertebrates who identifies this as an isopod.
Trilobitus miniaturus.
This is an isopod.
Don’t be ungrammatical. It’s an “I am so pod.”
my guess is some kind of sea louse… amazing the diversity we got on this ball of mud, no?
Does look like some isopoda but this is a large genus, this certainly does not identify it to species level or anywhere near. As for ‘Marine pillbug’ if as I assume pillbugs and woodlouse are one and the same they are one of the only terrestrial crustacea and are closely related to and are evolved from crabs, shell fish and other marine species anyway and as such require damp places to live and breath. Not convince about the trilobite theory having seen many living on Silurian limestone. Do like the ladybug (or any other coloeptra) larvae theory, with beetles being so massively numerous and diverse a group this seems most likely. The one things that ‘bugs’ me (Excuse the pun) is those crazy large antenna, they will be the key in identifying this one I reckon!
Wrong, skeptik. It’s obviously a man dressed in a very small bug suit. Look, see the zipper?
It looks like a cross between a sowbug and a centipede.
Whatever it is, it’s cute in its own little bizarre way.
@sausage1: yes, you’re probably right, it could be a man in a suit. On the other side the otter-theory sounds real too. We definitely need a sketch of it’s eyes, before we know for certain what it is… 😀
Okay, let’s get serious again… my guess is isopod too. The picture on that site fits the one on this site quite good.
The opening text pretty much pinned it down to Isopod, folks, but that does little to establish species. Morphologically, it certainly looks like the Isopods I used to encounter in my job at the Atlantic City Aquarium, although most were a little bigger than a grain of rice. The colour and patterning is what strikes me as being so different from the ordinary, as all the ones I’ve seen were the colour of bay muck- dark grey.
For whatever reason, this reminded me of the bizarre creatures of the Burgess Shale. Here’s a link to the cover of Stephen Jay Gould’s book on the Shale.
There are significant issues with SJG’s interpretations (and at least one of the creatures depicted was drawn upside down), but as a visual reference to similar creatures…
Obviously an Isopod of some sort. There are myriads of such small critters on this planet still waiting to be discovered and cataloged, especially in the oceans. This little thing actually may be fairly common, it might be that no one paid them much attention before or this one simply got stranded in a spot where it doesn’t normally occur. Think coelacanth on a very small scale.
pillbug with dead skin on the sides
Hello folks,
As noted in the original news post at the top of this column, this is a marine isopod crustacean. We have since identified it as a juvenile of Idotea phosphorea, a native Atlantic coast species.
– Jim Carlton
Looks like a Collembolan to me or a close relative
It looks to me like a new species of Isopod