A little boiling water, a little melted butter, and it goes right back to legendary status.

Scientists discovery new species of "legendary" giant crayfish.

In Tennessee!

In Tennessee, reports recently surfaced of a gigantic crayfish that no one had ever seen before. Much to their surprise, researchers found one hiding under a rock.


This crayfish is twice as big as its relatives, and there's only one other previously known species that's even remotely similar. This other species, Barbicambarus cornutus, was discovered in 1884 about 130 miles away in Kentucky, and can get as big as a lobster. This new crayfish has been named Barbicambarus simmonsi, with its species named for the scientist who discovered it. The Barbicambarus genus is unusual outside just its size, with tiny-hair like bristles on its antennae that look like tiny beards.

Considering how unusual such a creature is, aquatic biologist and co-discoverer Chris Taylor is convinced no one had ever seen this species before:

"This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back. If you were an aquatic biologist and you had seen this thing, because of the size and the setae on the antennae, you would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it."

So, how does something like that hide out in Tennessee?

Apparently, this is good news for Bigfoot and Nessie, who lives in a ponding basin in Fresno.

It's very rare to find a completely new species that's this big and distinctive, particularly in a well-studied part of the United States that has been under pretty much constant academic investigation for the last fifty years. Cryptozoologists might want to savor this moment - this is probably the closest real scientific equivalent to finding mythical creatures like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster that they're ever going to get.