Lord Howe Island, off Australia’s east coast, was once crawling with big, wingless stick insects about six inches long. Then in 1918 a shipwreck brought rats to the island, and the insects disappeared. For decades they were considered extinct. About 10 miles away stands Ball’s Pyramid, a rocky outcrop in the ocean. In 2001, scientists searching it found, in a single bush, three of the long-lost insects and a number of eggs. One scientist said it felt like being transported back to another time. A species everybody had counted as gone had been hanging on in one bush.
