Amateur collector from the Kempen lends his name to a previously unknown Cretaceous crustacean

A fossil that 66-year-old Diederik (Dirk) Eysermans from Vosselaar picked out of gravel years ago turns out to be a new species, VRT NWS reports. Palaeontologists at the Natural History Museum Maastricht described the animal in the journal Geodiversitas and named it Alsasuacaris dirkeysermansi, after the man who has been collecting fossils for some forty years. He had taken the gravel from the former ENCI cement quarry in Maastricht during an excursion and washed it at home, RTBF writes.

It is a small, crab-like crustacean belonging to the Cyclida, an extinct group of which only a few dozen species are known worldwide. According to RTBF, it is the youngest known member of its family and the first to be preserved in three dimensions. The researchers suspect it was a parasite on marine reptiles such as the mosasaur, although RTBF says this still needs further study.

Eysermans donated the fossil to the Nationaal Museum Oertijd in Boxtel in the Netherlands, where it has been on display since Thursday, VRT NWS and Paris Match Belgique report.