[6] The Saint Helena earwig was first discovered by Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius, who named it Labidura herculeana in 1798.

It later became confused with the smaller and more familiar shore earwig Labidura riparia, was demoted to a subspecies of that species in 1904, and received little attention from science.

[2] It was all but forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1962 when two ornithologists, Douglas Dorward and Philip Ashmole, found some enormous dry tail pincers while searching for bird bones.

[2] On 4 January 1982, the Saint Helena Philatelic Bureau issued a commemorative stamp depicting the earwig, which brought attention to its conservation.

It is possibly extinct due to habitat loss, "by the removal of nearly all surface stones.. ... for construction", as well as predation by introduced rodents, mantids, and centipedes (Scolopendra morsitans).