Meteora sporadica

Meteora sporadica is a free-living species of protozoan discovered in 2002 during sampling at a depth of 1,230 meters below sea level in the Sporades Basin, part of the Mediterranean Sea. It is the only named species of the genus Meteora.

It was placed as Eukaryota incertae sedis due to its unique morphology unlike any other group of protists. Two decades later, a 2022 phylogenetic analysis of Meteora still was not able to solidly relate it to any known group of eukaryotes, suggesting that it could be a new high-level eukaryotic group. In 2024 it was revealed to be related to Hemimastigophora. This was clarified in the 2025 description of Solarion arienae, which placed Meteora and Solarion as sister taxa within a new clade Caelestes, in turn sister to hemimastigophorans.

Cells of M. sporadica are small and highly flexible, bearing multiple elongate extensions used in locomotion and prey capture. The organism is considered a benthic bacterivore and has since been recovered from several shallow-water and intertidal environments, indicating a wider ecological distribution than originally assumed.