New Species of 'Indestructible' Animal Found in Surprising Place
Discovered in a parking lot in Japan, the tardigrade species could provide clues for how the animal has changed over time.
Tardigrades are microscopic, resilient organisms that might just outlive the Sun—and their known world just got a little bigger.
A paper with their findings was published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.
Tardigrades were first discovered in 1773 by a German zoologist, but they weren't fully characterized until a few years later. Also called "water bears" and "moss piglets," the creatures are plump, multilegged organisms that can be seen under a microscope. They have primitive eyes, measure around 0.02 inches long, and have been found in just about every environment on Earth, from the dark, deep sea and the humid, hot rainforest.
Although they spend their lives waddling around landscapes of moss, lichen, or leaf litter, tardigrades are easily the
