Pauline Taxa: Fossil Taxa Later Discovered Alive

By Branden Holmes

In addition to the many millions of living species which have been described, a few very special taxa have been named upon the basis of fossil or subfossil material only to later be discovered still living. Although often called Lazarus taxa in both the technical and popular literature, an allusion to the story of the Biblical Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead after four days (John 11:1-44), pronunciation of extinction in each of these cases turned out to be premature, unlike that of Lazarus. None of them were really resurrected from the dead like Lazarus, or the Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), the only true Lazarus taxon to date (Folch et al., 2009)¹.

Instead the reappearance of most taxa, both those discovered and rediscovered as living, should rather be likened to Paul in Acts (Acts 14:19-20), when he is stoned, putatively to death, but recovers, clearly never having actually been dead. And hence these taxa should be more appropriately referred to as Pauline taxa rather than Lazarus taxa, a name which I shall adopt throughout this website.

Table 1. An incomplete list of Pauline taxa.²

Table 2. Rediscovery of ghost lineages.

Table 3. Pauline taxa later shown to represent a different species. 

Table 4. Recent taxa considered extinct when described but later rediscovered

Table 5. Long extinct species rediscovered via discovery of an extant subspecies

Appendix 1: Potential future additions to this list

• The fossil species Sarcophilus laniarius (Owen, 1838) might be conspecific with the extant Tasmanial devil, Sarcophilus harrisii (Boitard, 1841).

Appendix 2: Species first recorded as fossils and later as living individuals prior to scientific description

• Tellina cockburnensis (Kendrick & Brearley, 1984).

Appendix 3: Long extinct genera (or higher) rediscovered via description or transfer of living species

• Alavesia leukoprosopa Amorim et al., 2020

• Dromiciops gliroides Thomas, 1894 [family Microbiotheriidae thought extinct prior to rediscovery]

• Eidothea zoexylocarya A.W.Douglas & B.Hyland (1995)

• Eurhodia relicta Mooi, 1990

• Gracilidris pombero Wild & Cuezzo, 2006

• Laonastes aenigmamus Jenkins et al., 2005 [family Diatomyidae thought extinct prior to rediscovery]

• Order: Tryblidiida (Lemche, 1957)

• Submyotodon caliginosus

• Wollemia nobilis (W.G.Jones, K.D.Hill & J.M.Allen, 1995)

Notes

¹ Although the Southern gastric brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus) has also been resurrected, albeit in a restricted sense (see Phillips, 2013).

² I owe a debt to a blog post by vertebrate palaeontologist Darren Naish.

³ Sadly this species is now believed to be extinct. The last known individual was collected in 1937.

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