CenSeam researcher Bertrand Richer de Forges talks about this new discovery:

"It's a new species of the genus Neoglyphea. The Glypheides were well known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and were supposed to be extinct at the Eocene (about 50 million years ago).

In 1906, the US research vessel "Albatross" caught one live specimen in the Philippines. But nobody recognized it and for 60 years the specimen stayed in the National Museum of Washington. In 1975, two French scientists, J. Forest and Michele de Saint Laurent, discovered this specimen and described it as a fantastic discovery. In fact, the Glypheids were supposed to be the ancestors of all the decapod crustacea.

As soon as possible, in 1976, an oceanographic cruise was organized with a small French research vessel "Vauban" to return to the Philippines. It was a great success and they caught 9 specimens of this "living fossil". It was then possible to publish a detailed description of the animals, and to formulate some phylogenetic hypotheses based on fossil comparisons.

In 1980 and 1985 2 other cruises were carried out in the same area onboard the "Coriolis" - another French vessel, enabling the collection of more specimens including an adult female. In total, 13 specimens of this very rare Neoglyphea inopinata (Forest & de Saint Laurent, 1975) were discovered. In 1985 and 1986, 2 specimens of this species were caught by an Australian commercial trawler in the Arafura Sea.

In October 2005, I conducted an oceanographic cruise (EBISCO) onboard the R.V. "Alis" on the lineament of seamounts below the Chesterfield Islands, on the edge of the Lord Howe Rise. This cruise was devoted to the study of isolation and endemism on the seamounts. After 2 days, trawling on the Capel Bank (about 25°S) at 400 m, we got a strange shrimp...It was a new species of the genus Neoglyphea!

For invertebrate scientists this is equivalent to the discovery of the second species of coelacanth in Indonesia some years ago. Immediately we sent a photo (by email) to my excellent colleagues A. Crosnier in Paris and P.K.L. Ng in Singapore...some hours later they confirmed the identification."

Portrait of Bertrand Richer de Forges

The full paper "Discovery in the Coral Sea of a second species of glypheid (Crustacea, Decapoda, Glypheoidea)" is published by the journal Zoosystema (Volume 28, issue 1, 2006).