A microbe found in Canadian soil got its own rank above 'kingdom'

Hemimastigotes were first described in 1988, but stayed a mystery until a 2018 genetic study of a species found in Nova Scotia soil. The analysis showed they split from every other branch of complex life over a billion years ago — different enough that biologists placed them in a brand-new 'supra-kingdom', a rank above kingdom.

— Gordon Lax, Yana Eglit, Alastair G. B. Simpson et al., Hemimastigophora is a novel supra-kingdom-level lineage of eukaryotes — Nature, 2018