In 1931, a naturalist noticed a small, yellow ant in the Outback. He had never seen anything like it before, which probably is not that rare a statement when it comes to Australian fauna. He brought it with him to his museum in Melbourne where no one took a close look at it for three years. When someone finally did, the researcher gasped when he realized that the ant was actually a nothomyrmecia, also known as the "dinosaur ant", long thought to be extinct. It was as if someone had stumbled across a living brontosaurus, as the nothomyrmecia is the "missing link" between ants and wasps.
A return to the location of the original sighting revealed no other ants, although they have subsequently been found in other portions of the continent.
