Japanese researchers have found a fragment of what it claims to be the world’s oldest German cockroach from third century ruins in Nara Prefecture.
Nara Women’s University announced Wednesday that a joint research team of the university and the Osaka Museum of Natural History discovered a piece of the cockroach during a 2018 excavation of the Makimuku Ruins in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture.
The discovery marks what could be the first evidence of the presence of the species during Japan’s Kofun Period (250 to 552), the university said in a press release.