Mr. Christian Rabeling, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, is the man responsible for the discovery in a Brazilian rainforest of a new species of ants. The new species was named Martialis heureka, which would translate into “From Mars! Wow!”

“It was basically a joke, and we made it the genus name,” Mr. Rabeling said, referring to the fact that the ant’s appearance, with its long and thin jaw and no eyes, caused quite a surprise among researchers.

“It really betrays our expectations,” said Mr. Stefan Cover, a curatorial assistant at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. “This thing is totally blind and subterranean.”

After several tests, the conclusion reached was that this is the most primitive of all the ants living today, with its DNA mostly unchanged over a period of about 100 years.

A similar specimen was found back in 2003 in the same area but due to an incident in the laboratory, the ant dried up and all the planned tests were impossible to complete. These days, the discovery of a new species is considered big news for researchers, as the general belief is that there are very few areas uncovered at this point.

In order to make the general public understand their enthusiasm, German biologist Manfred Verhaagh, working with Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum, explained that the last new ant species was discovered back in 1923.

Aside from Mr. Rabeling and Mr. Verhaagh, the research included graduate student Jeremy Brown and Brazilian ecologist Marcos Garcia and it is fully presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.