The 2009 AP3 field season was not our most successful, due to our near-total inability to access our sites of interest because of an abundance of sea ice in the James Ross Island area. However, we were able to land on James Ross Island twice, and during one of those visits, Matt Lamanna discovered the fossil of a small crab in a rock concretion of the Upper Cretaceous (~90 million-year-old) Hidden Lake Formation. Because Matt specializes in the study of dinosaurs, he wasn’t sure how significant his find was or wasn’t. But upon returning to the USA, he sent the specimen to two fossil crab experts he’d worked with before, Drs. Carrie Schweitzer and Rodney Feldmann of Kent State University in Ohio. Surprisingly, the fossil turned out to represent a brand-new species of Cretaceous crab that Drs. Schweitzer, Feldmann, and Lamanna named Hadrocarcinus tectilacus in a 2012 paper published in the Annals of Carnegie Museum.

The face of satisfaction: Matt Lamanna proudly displays part of his new fossil crab on the ARSV Laurence M. Gould during the 2009 field season. Photo by Steve Salisbury.

The type, or name-bearing, specimen of the fossil crab species Hadrocarcinus tectilacus. The specimen is preserved in a rock concretion that had split into several pieces by the time Matt found it. Much of the body outline of the crab is visible in the piece at top center. Photo by Steve Salisbury.