Scientists proclaimed the Darwinilus sedarisi beetle an official kind of classification for the insect in honor of naturalist Charles Darwin's birth Tuesday, or going back into time, Feb. 12, 1809 National Geographic magazine reported Thursday.
"Finding a new species is always exciting," Stylianos Chatzimanolis, an entomologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga said in a statement National Geographic reported. "Finding one collected by Darwin is truly amazing," Chatzimanolis said in the statement.
Chatzimanolis thought of the name for the beetle, and oversaw the study, which was printed in the ZooKeys open-access journal.
Chatzimanolis explored museums throughout North American and Europe in attempt to find more beetles like the Darwinilus sedarisi, and only came across another in Rio Cuarto, Argentina, that was kept in the Naturkunde der Humboldt Universität.museum prior to 1935 National Geographic reported.
"There is a famous Darwin quote about beetles," Stylianos Chatzimanolis, an entomologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga told National Geographic. who led the study of the new beetle and came up with its name. Darwin "said that 'Whenever I hear of the capture of rare beetles, I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of a trumpet.' I think Darwinilus sedarisi certainly qualifies as such a discovery," Chatzimanolis told National Geographic.
Chatzimanolis feels no other beetles could be found because they are evasive.
"One certainly hopes that a newly described species is not already extinct," Chatzimanolis told National Geographic.
Darwin discovered the first beetle insect in 1832 off the coast of Bahia Blanca in Argentina while on the United States Navy boat, the HMS Beagle National Geographic reported.
"Darwin was fascinated with the sheer diversity of rove beetles," Chatzimanolis told National Geographic.
The beetle is now added to 58,000 other rove beetles that scientists are still researching.
"(That's) "more than ten times the number of mammals in the world, yet we know very little about them," Chatzimanolis told National Geographic.
