(To watch some videos about modern stick insects, click here.) Researchers noted that the three specimens each measured roughly 2 inches long, with the female being slightly larger than the males.

The stick insect was eventually classified as extinct in 1983, along with 12 other insect species and five bird species. Then, in 1960, a group of rock climbers visited another small volcanic rock ...

As Kaplan reports, plant seeds and stick insect eggs have some conspicuous similarities. Both are small and hard-shelled and are sometimes even covered in a protective coating of calcium oxalate.

Some 370 miles off Australia's east coast, in the Lord Howe Island Group, researchers have discovered a creature long thought to be extinct--a stick insect known as Dryococelus australis.

Within 30 years, the Lord Howe Island stick insects vanished. Then, in 1964, climbers on a nearby volcano known as Ball's Pyramid found a dead insect that looked suspiciously like the fabled land ...