The cave in the basement

Beneath stately Jordan Hall on the Indiana University campus is a cave that gave the scientific world a new named creature -- and may have cost the world an undescribed one.

The cave opening -- properly called Jordan Hall Spring -- was uncovered by excavation for the building. When cave water seeped into the sub-basement, along came crustaceans.

A species of isopod -- a group of 14-legged animals that includes pill bugs -- was discovered and named Asellus jordani. There's something fitting about a creature bearing the Jordan name: The building honors David Starr Jordan, an IU president and scientist who named more than 2,500 species of fish.

Also discovered were two kinds of shrimp-like amphipods, one known only from that spring. And it may never be known again -- a termite treatment poisoned the spring, and the days of bizarre cave creatures in the sub-basement came to an end.