Behold the bone-skipper, high in the running for the strangest fly on Earth. For the bone-skipper, fresh carcasses just won't do. No, these flies prefer large, dead bodies in advanced stages of decay. And unlike most flies, they are active in early winter, from November to January, usually after dark.
They also disappeared from human notice and were declared extinct for more than a century. That's why they've often been considered almost mythical or legendary, said Pierfilippo Cerretti, a researcher at the Sapienza University of Rome.
In the past few years, three species of bone-skipper have been rediscovered in Europe, setting off a buzz among fly aficionados. But many bone-skippers were found by amateur scientists and recorded in photographs or video; actual specimens of the flies are few and far between. For the first time, Cerretti and colleagues have established a "type specimen" or "neotype" for one bone-skipper species, to which all of these bone-skippers will be compared in the future, in order to be identified.
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