Giant stick insects found on Lord Howe Island a genetic match for 'extinct' phasmids

Scientists confirm creatures discovered on Ball's Pyramid in 2001 are the same species rats were believed to have killed off a century earlier

Scientists have confirmed that giant insects found on a rocky outcrop off Lord Howe Island are a genetic match for the island's stick insects that were believed to have gone extinct almost 100 years earlier.

The species were assumed to be one and the same. However significant morphological differences between the Lord Howe Island stick insects collected in the early 1900s and stored in museum collections, and the phasmids discovered in 2001 on Ball's Pyramid (a remnant volcano about 23km off the main island), created a suspicion the latter could be a related species - rather than the original back from the dead.