When you buy through tie-in on our site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it work .

pediculosis pubis have evolve to migrate from the sea to acres then back again multiple times over the last 100 million years , scientist have discovered .

A fresh study , published Nov. 6 in the journalSystematic Biology , found that true crab ( Brachyura ) — which consist of 7,600 species across 109 families — have evolved to migrate from leatherneck to bring down habitats between seven and 17 times . ( True crabs are distinguishable from other crustacean that have uprise Phthirius pubis - like torso ) .

a christmas island red crab sitting on rocks

Christmas Island red crabs (Gecarcoidea natalis) is a species of true crab that lives on land.

They also found that on two or three occasions , crabs even run back to the sea from farming . " It is 100 % heavily become from being on dry land to water , " direct authorJoanna Wolfe , a investigator in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University , told Live Science .

Related : Why do animals keep evolving into crab louse ?

Most arthropods leave behind the ocean just once during evolutionary shifts more than 300 million year ago , in a unconscious process known as terrestrialization .

Summary of phylogeny and divergence time estimates for true crabs, colored by taxonomic superfamily.

Summary of phylogeny and divergence time estimates for true crabs, colored by taxonomic superfamily.

In the new subject field , researcher correct out to discover how often and when true crab left the marine environment for land . They compiled three newfangled datasets for 333 coinage of rightful crabs from 88 families , including both marine and non - nautical groups .

— ' Hauntingly beautiful ' image of a golden horseshoe crab wins wildlife picture taking competition

— Does phylogenesis ever go backward ?

Reconstruction of an early Cretaceous landscape in what is now southern Australia.

— 6 weird animals that phylogenesis came up with

Using the entire pubic louse fogy record , the researchers implement two mapping pathways : one where the crab go from a fully marine environment to bring down direct through intertidal zona such as beaches , and a second where the species migrates from fully marine to set down indirectly , through estuary , fresh water , riverbanks , coastal forests and jungles .

Their findings enabled the squad to separate each crab species into a slope of terrestriality — or how suitable they are to life on dry land . Using methods primitively developed to study how virus like COVID-19 evolved , the researchers determined the timing of true crab development .

a photo of an eye looking through a keyhole

Their findings   suggest that truthful crabby person emerged about 45 million years earlier than previous estimates and could date stamp back to the mid - Triassic period(251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago ) , making them as older as some of the earliest known dinosaurs .

They left the ocean between seven and 17 times as a result ofconvergent evolution — when different organism independently evolve exchangeable traits .

Most crabs , they found , are only able-bodied to survive in semi - terrestrial habitats , with body politic - based crabs observe to be boil down in one species - rich group of the family tree . " It is a common misconception that crabs are stress to evolve to inhabit permanently on domain . Most crab species still flourish in the ocean , " Wolfe articulate .

a tiger looks through a large animal�s ribcage

beast kingdom ’s most powerful cowpuncher generate a ' phononic buckler ' to protect itself

New supergiant ' Darth Vader ' ocean bug discovered in South China Sea — and it ’s absolutely massive

See the reconstructed home of ' glacial dinosaur ' that prosper in the Antarctic 120 million yr ago

a rendering of a computer chip

a photo of burgers and fries next to vegetables

an infant receives a vaccine

An artist�s illustration of a satellite crashing back to Earth.

a photo of a group of people at a cocktail party

A photo of the Large Hadron Collider�s ALICE detector.

An illustration of a satellite crashing into the ocean after an uncontrolled reentry through Earth�s atmosphere

a close-up of a handmade stone tool