Tokyo elementary school sisters discover rare cicada fossil

The Middle Pleistocene fossil was found by Maho Shinomiya, 11, a sixth-grader, and her sister, Yuno, 8, a third-grader, both from the city of Higashikurume. They share a love of fossils.

Maho became interested in fossils after seeing specimens collected by her mother, Chika, and being surprised to learn that living creatures can turn into stone.
   
In June last year, Chika ordered a rock for study and as a souvenir from the Konoha Fossils Museum in the city of Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, eastern Japan, known for its rich fossil deposits.

When the sisters broke the rock on their balcony, they uncovered what appeared to be an insect head.
   
Suspecting it might be valuable, Chika contacted Hiroaki Aiba, a specialist in insect fossils and honorary teacher at the Keio Gijuku educational group, and sent the fossil for examination.

After cleaning the specimen, Aiba discovered a large, whole-body cicada fossil about 62 millimetres long. He says that whole-body cicada fossils are extremely rare, with most fossils consisting only of wing fragments.

The specimen was identified as a male, based on its sound-producing abdominal organ, and was found to be closely related to the Auritibicen flammatus species in Japan.

According to Aiba, the absence of the characteristic wing patterns suggests the fossil may represent an ancestral form of the species, making it valuable for understanding the evolutionary process of cicadas.
   
In February, Aiba published a paper on the fossil with Masami Hayashi, emeritus professor at Saitama University, well-versed in cicada classification.
   
Learning that their discovery was significant enough to be published as a paper, Maho said she was "very surprised and excited." She added that she hopes to become a paleontologist and wants to search for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert in Asia.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]