Spanish Find Another Gollum

A new rather large insect, a new japygid (Order: Diplura; Family: Japygidae), has been discovered in Spain. The japygids are easily identified by the pincers at the end of the abdomen. They look like earwigs (order: Dermaptera) which also have pincers but japygids are eyeless whereas earwigs have large compound eyes. The following is a translated Spanish article, passed along by Scott Corrales, about this discovery.

If we are speaking in terms of an animal of external origin that adapted to an underground medium, evolved until it gave rise to a new species and is also named Gollum, everything would point to the famous character from Lord of the Rings. But in fact it is a cave-dwelling invertebrate discovered in the caves of the Spanish Levant. Its discoverers wish to bestow upon it the name Gollumjapyx smeagol in honor of Tolkien’s famous character.

The new insect has characteristics befitting the subterranean environment, such as unpigmentened thorax, long appendages and antennae, but its two-centimeter length make it the largest cave-dwelling hexapod in the Peninsula. Its extraordinary flexibility and powerful pincers make Gollumjapyx smeagol a fearsome predator.

The scientists who discovered it – Vicente Ortuno, a researcher from the University of Alcala’s Ramon y Cajal Program, and several members of the Natural History Museum of Valencia – noted that their discovery represents a hitherto unknown new genus and species. The first specimens were found 25 years ago, but new research led to the discovery of this new species a little over three years ago.

Loren Coleman 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.

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