Giant Flying Insect Found At Arkansas Walmart Turns Out To Be ‘Super-Rare’ Jurassic-Era Bug

Michael Skvarla, the director of Pennsylvania State University’s Insect Identification Lab, made a rare discovery while he was still a student. One day in 2012, while shopping for milk at a Walmart in Fayetteville, Arkansas, he noticed a Giant Flying Insect on the building’s brown brick wall.
A decade later, Skvarla and Codey Mathis, a doctoral candidate in entomology at Penn State, realized the significance of this discovery. The truth about the bug dawned on Skvarla while he was teaching an online course based on his personal insect collection during the pandemic.
Through molecular DNA analysis and a review of collection records, it was established that the giant lacewing had not been spotted in eastern North America in over 50 years. Skvarla hypothesized that the bug’s had been driven out of its habitat by forest fire prevention and urbanization, which were responsible for the proliferation of it’s non-native predators.
Giant Flying Insect Found At Arkansas Walmart Turns Out To Be ‘Super-Rare’ Jurassic-Era Bug