MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008
(04-10) 05:43 PDT BANGKOK, Thailand (AP)
A frog has been found in a remote part of Indonesia that has no lungs and breathes through its skin, a discovery that researchers said Thursday could provide insight into what drives evolution in certain species.
[...]
“These are about the most ancient and bizarre frogs you can get on the planet,” Bickford said of the brown amphibian with bulging eyes and a tendency to flatten itself as it glides across the water.
“They are like a squished version of Jabba the Hutt,” he said, referring to the character from Star Wars. “They are flat and have eyes that float above the water. They have skin flaps coming off their arms and legs.”
Along with the lungless frog, Bickford said his team discovered two new lizard species and four other species of frogs during their two-month trip.
Despite its name, the creature, along with the 15 other known species of elephant shrew, is not actually related to shrews.
Dr Rathbun told the BBC News website: “Elephant shrews are only found in Africa. They were originally described as shrews because they superficially resembled shrews in Europe and in America.”
In fact, the creature is more closely related to a group of African mammals, which includes elephants, sea cows, aardvarks and hyraxes, having shared a common ancestor with them about 100 million years ago.
“This is why they are also known as sengis,” explained Dr Rathbun.
From Yahoo news:
The newcomer, dubbed Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, stands head and shoulders above his cousins, weighing in at a massive 700 grammes (1.5 pounds), about 25 percent larger than any other known sengi.
He was identified by scientists Galen Rathbun of the California Academy of Sciences and Francesco Rovero of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Trento, Italy.
Their discovery is published in the February issue of the British-based Journal of Zoology.
“This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career,” Rathbun, a 30-year veteran of sengi-watching, said in a press release.
“It is the first new species of giant elephant-shrew to be discovered in more than 126 years. From the moment I first lifted one of the animals into our photography tent, I knew it must be a new species — not just because of its distinct colouring, but because it was so heavy!”
“When the ant Cephalotes atratus is infected with a parasitic nematode, its normally black abdomen turns red, resembling the many red berries in the tropical forest canopy. According to researchers, this is a strategy concocted by nematodes to entice birds to eat the normally unpalatable ant and spread the parasite in their droppings. (Steve Yanoviak/University of Arkansas)
The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 16, 2008;
4:29 PM LONDON
– Eeek! Imagine a rodent that weighed a ton and was as big as a bull. Uruguayan scientists say they have uncovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent ever found, one that scurried across wooded areas of South America about 4 million years ago, when the continent was not connected to North America.
A herbivore, the beast may have been a contemporary, and possibly prey, of saber-toothed cats _ a prehistoric version of Tom and Jerry.
For those afraid of rodents, forget hopping on a chair. Its huge skull, more than 20 inches long, suggested a beast more than eight feet long and weighing between 1,700 and 3,000 pounds….
(AP) — A Dutch scientist thinks he has discovered a new species of wild pig nearly twice the size of other pigs in Brazil’s Amazon region.
At four feet long and 90 pounds, the pig is the latest in a string of new species that Marc van Roosmalen reported to have found since 1996. His findings were published in the Oct. 29 edition of the German scientific journal Bonner Zoologische Beitrage.
Van Roosmalen, said his discovery of the peccary - a kind of wild pig he dubbed Pecari maximus - points out the need to protect the region as a habitat for wild species.
He said he made his discovery by accident in 2000, while searching for a new monkey species.
[...]
The region where Roosmalen discovered the new peccary and other species - mostly primates - lies along a logging frontier around Nova Aripuana, where the number of sawmills has grown from two in 2002 to 14 today.
[...]
DNA analysis showed the animal diverged from the most closely related species, Pecari tajacu, or collared peccary, about 1 million to 1.2 million years ago, Van Roosmalen said.
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico — Researchers at New Mexico State University recently discovered the world’s hottest chile pepper. Bhut Jolokia, a variety of chile pepper originating in Assam, India, has earned Guiness World Records’ recognition as the world’s hottest chile pepper by blasting past the previous champion Red Savina. In replicated tests of Scoville heat units (SHUs), Bhut Jolokia reached one million SHUs, almost double the SHUs of Red Savina, which measured a mere 577,000.
Dr. Paul Bosland, Director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences collected seeds of Bhut Jolokia while visiting India in 2001. Bosland grew Bhut Jolokia plants under insect-proof cages for three years to produce enough seed to complete the required field tests. “The name Bhut Jolokia translates as ‘ghost chile,’” Bosland said, “I think it’s because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!” Bosland added that the intense heat concentration of Bhut Jolokia could have significant impact on the food industry as an economical seasoning in packaged foods.
Founded in 1903, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) is the largest organization dedicated to advancing all facets of horticultural research, education, and application. Society website - ashs.org
A previously unknown indigenous group living in isolation has been found deep in Peru’s Amazon jungle, a team of ecologists has said. The ecologists spotted the 21 Indians near the Brazilian border as they flew overhead looking for illegal loggers.
The group was photographed and filmed from the air on the banks of the Las Piedras River in Peru’s south-eastern Amazon region.
A government official who was on the flight said there were three palm huts on the river bank.
“We’ve found five other sites with this kind of shelter along the same river,” Ricardo Hon told Associated Press news agency.
__________
Get more info from the original article at BBC News.–While you’re there, make a point to check out the links to other articles about Peruvian Indians in the news. The links can be found at the top of the right-hand column.
Find an INCREDIBLE resource for information on Native Amazonian tribes (including maps, photos*, videos, illustrations of different ceremonies- like the ‘Poison Frog Ceremony’- and MUCH more!) at Amazon-Indians.org, Matses.info, and Amazonz.info.
*please be aware that there is ‘National Geographic’ style nudity in the photos at these sites. These are native Natives.
Photo credit: Amazon-Indians.org, with many thanks! The Indians pictured are of the Matis tribe, of theYavarí Valley in Brazil. They bear many cultural and linguistic similarities to other tribes in Peru. You can find out more about that at the site.
” High up on the Mesa, in the Grand Valley town of Collbran, a tiny four legged wonder sticks close to its mothers side. It is the latest addition to the ranch owned by Larry and Laura Amos. But this is a once-in-a-million, genetically impossible occurrence of a mule giving birth.
The mother of this beauty, is named Kate. She is a mule. Mules are a hybrid of two species, a female horse and a male donkey. Breeding the two results in a species with 63 chromosomes. A horse has 64, a donkey has 62. A mule can’t reproduce because you need an even number of chromosomes to divide into pairs.
This little wonder came into the world in late April to the shock of the Amos family. Doting mother Kate has no idea what she has accomplished.”
November 2006
From an article at Science in Africa:
“South African Marine biologist Professor Charles Griffith from the University of Cape Town has chalked up the discovery of over 100 new species in his career. These include a new genus of freshwater shrimp, Mathamelita, named after his son Matthew, and a new family of seaslugs, Lemindidae named by his wife after their daughter Melinda - indeed a real family affair! His most recent find is larger meat though: a new giant species of spiny lobster, Palinurus barbarae (Decapoda Palinuridae) from Walters Shoals on the Madagascar Ridge.
Only three new lobster species have been identified in the past 12 years, worldwide. These beauties weigh in at up to 4kgs [*] and were discovered accidentally, when a Spanish fishing vessel working in the Indian Ocean docked in Durban and applied for a permit to export their lobster catch to Europe. …” continued…
*some sites have reported the lobsters weigh “1kg, or 4lbs”- which is incorrect anyway (1kg=2.2lbs approx), but the Census of Marine Life website lists them as 4kg, so I am trusting their data.
A host of record-breaking discoveries and revelations that stretch the extreme frontiers of marine knowledge were achieved by the Census of Marine Life in 2006, highlights of which were released today.
They include life adapted to brutal conditions around 407°C fluids spewing from a seafloor vent (the hottest ever discovered), a mighty microbe 1 cm in diameter, mysterious 1.8 kg (4 lb) lobsters off the Madagascar coast, a US school of fish the size of Manhattan Island, and more unfamiliar than familiar species turned up beneath 700 meters of Antarctic ice.
An Australian scientist has made a discovery which is electrifying world fungal biology - a new truffle genus related to the famous Amanita family, or fairy toadstools.
The Amanita family is famed worldwide for the red and white-spotted toadstools beloved of children’s fairy tales, the lethal Death Cap beloved of tabloid media, and a range of delicious edible fungi beloved of gourmets.
The find, by CSIRO Forestry and Forest Products mycologist Dr Neale Bougher, highlights Australia as one of the richest centers of truffle biodiversity on the planet.
Until Dr Bougher discovered the new fungus in the rejuvenating forest landscape of a former bauxite mine near Perth, WA, no one had ever found a truffle - or underground mushroom - related to Amanita.
“It’s not just a new species. It’s a whole new genus,” he explains. “Scientists have been looking for this round the world for well over a century - and here it is, in Australia.”
Since the original find by Dr Bougher, he and colleague Dr Teresa Lebel of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, have identified no fewer than five new species of what has now been scientifically named Amarrendia - a marriage of the names Amanita and Torrendia, the two families of fungi most closely related to the discovery. Read entire article here.
From an original article by Christine Dell’Amore
July 17, 2007—
The recently discovered Hammer Orchid has evolved to imitate the appearance of a female wasp. Curious male wasps are lured in to investigate, and when they land on the flower, they unwittingly collect and disperse pollen.
The orchid is one of six new species found in the biologically rich region of southwestern Australia.
…Several of the orchid species are threatened by pressures such as invasive species and illegal harvesting.
‘Cryptic species’ are look-alikes.
Two or more species that have no visible differences, but have different genetic makeup- different to the point that there is no crossbreeding between the species.
Cryptic species can come from completely different evolutionary and genetic sources, or they can originally come from the same genetic background, evolving on different lines until they are no longer the same species. In either case, they are genetically incompatible animals, but somehow they still look identical.
In other words- you can only tell them apart by doing genetic tests, or by watching very carefully to see if there are separate breeding groups. Considering this, it is understandable that many of the cryptic species are only now coming to light, and many more may never be found.
The recent rise in genetic profiling of animal species has led to the discovery of literally thousands of cryptic species - animals which previously had been assumed to be of one species have now been found to be genetically unique.
German researchers Markus Pfenninger and Klaus Schwenk noticed an “exponential growth of publications on cryptic species.” They saw the confusion and lack of information surrounding this growing issue, and they decided to do some calculations.
Up until now, it’s been believed that cryptic species were more commonly seen among insects and reptiles, and that they tended to evolve more frequently in the tropics. However, after defining more than 22,000 cases of cryptic species discovered in the past twenty-eight years, the two researchers determined that look-alike species are found in similar frequency regardless of the type of animal or region of the world.
The this information has implications for every aspect of the bological sciences. Biodiversity projects, envronmental conservation, pathological studies, and even human health care could be affected by cases of unnoticed species, or mistaken identities.
How many more could be out there, now that we know that they’re more widespread than anyone thought?
Scientists at Holar University College and the University of Iceland have discovered two species of groundwater amphipods (one of which is in its own family). These are currently the only species known to be endemic to Iceland.
Bjarni K. Kristjánsson, the scientist who found the two species, believes that their presence in Iceland can only be explained if they are leftovers from the last ice age.
From the EurekAlert article:
“Groundwater amphipods are poor at dispersal, and can not be transported with birds or humans,” says Jörundur Svavarsson. One of these new species falls within a new family of amphipods, which indicates that the species has been a long time in Iceland. “The time since the end of the last glaciation is not enough for a family to evolve,” says Svavarsson. Kristjansson and Svavarsson find it likely that the amphipod came to Iceland as early as 30-40 million years ago, when the volcanic island was being formed. “If our theory is right, we have discovered the oldest inhabitants of Iceland, and that can help us further understand how Iceland was formed,” says Kristjansson.
Adventurers exploring a cave on an island in the Indian Ocean have discovered the most complete and well-preserved dodo skeleton ever found, scientists reported yesterday.
Researchers say the find would likely yield the first useful samples of the extinct, flightless bird’s DNA.
What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists.
The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority’s deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.
“When we first saw it, I was really delighted because it was new and alive,” said Jan War, operations manager at NELHA. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
According to Richard Young, an oceanography professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the specimen tentatively belongs to the genus Mastigoteuthis, but the species is undetermined.
War, who termed the specimen “octosquid” for the way it looked, said it was about a foot long, with white suction cups, eight tentacles and an octopus head with a squidlike mantle.
Get all the details, and another photo, from the original article at StarBulletin.com.
The specimen [died two days later, then] was preserved and sent to the University of Hawaii-Manoa’s oceanography team, which examined the carcass and today announced the deep-sea squid belongs to an already identified species. However, so little is known about the species that scientists have not yet given it a name.
Discovery of undersea creature leads to new archaeal phylum
By Kate Dalke
May 9, 2002
A new microbe has been discovered in an undersea hydrothermal vent off the coast of Iceland. The creature, named Nanoarchaeum equitans, is a member of the Archaea, the domain of life that is separate from plants, animals, and bacteria. The microbe does not fit any existing taxonomic groups, so the researchers who discovered it have proposed a new archaeal phylum called Nanoarchaeota, which stands for ‘dwarf archaea.’
Perhaps not terribly impressive, but it IS a new PHYLUM!
November 2, 2006.GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Genetic analysis of an obscure, worm-like creature retrieved from the depths of the North Atlantic has led to the discovery of a new phylum, a rare event in an era when most organisms have already been grouped into major evolutionary categories.
Scientists have long been puzzled by the half-inch-long creature known by its scientific name of Xenoturbella and first retrieved from the Baltic Sea more than 50 years ago. Early genetic research identified it as a type of mollusk. But then scientists discovered the mollusk-like DNA actually resulted not from the creature itself, but from its close association to clams and likely habit of eating mollusk eggs, Moroz said. The Xenoturbella does not seem to have a brain, gut or gonads, making it unique among living animals.
More precise genomic sequencing at the Whitney Lab – where Moroz and his collaborators identified about 1,300 genes including mitochondrial genes – helped to reveal a surprise: Xenoturbella belongs to its own phylum, a broad class of organisms lying just below kingdom in taxonomic classification. It is one of only about 32 such phyla in the animal kingdom. “During the last 50 to 60 years, only a few new phyla have been established,” Moroz said.
Perhaps more significant, the analysis of Xenoturbella seems to confirm that human beings and other chordates share a common ancestor, a first in science. Its extreme characteristics suggest that this common ancestor – one the creature shares with its sister phyla, echinoderms and hemichordates, as well as chordates — did not have a brain or central nervous system.
Palaeos.com has a very good writeup on the Xenoturbella, with explanations of the historical and recent issues of classifying this little marvel .
Side note: When I first started this site, I thought about adding a category for “New Phylum”, but figured it wasn’t likely it would ever be used…. Seems that I needed to ‘free my imagination’! SO! I am thrilled to announce the addition of the new category!
January 29, 2007
From Original Article By
Katrin Schmiedekampf
Earlier this month, amateur fisherman Haruo Kanbe stared out at sea in horror — a monster fish was swimming directly towards him. At first glance the creature snaking through the water looked like a giant eel. The cloudy eyes were especially striking. Triangular teeth flashed inside its open maw.
Normally, the prehistoric creatures dwell between 600 and 1,200 meters (between 1,969 and 3,937 feet) below the ocean surface. Until now, few people have had the opportunity to come face to face with a living specimen.
The frilled shark has hardly changed for 95 million years. That’s why it’s considered a “living fossil.” Unlike other types of shark that evolved later, the frilled shark has six gills on each side instead of five. The first pair of gills is coadunate with the underside of the neck; the protruding tissue gives the shark its name.
One of the creature’s most striking features is that both its upper and its lower jaw are equipped with fork-like, equi-sized teeth.The creature from the depths is one of the rarest fish in the world. Specimens occasionally show up in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. They feature on the Red List of Threatened Species compiled annually by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
In Antarctica’s Ross Sea, a fishing boat has caught what is likely the world’s biggest known colossal squid (yes, that’s the species’ name), New Zealand officials announced today.
Heavier than even giant squid, colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) have eyes as wide as dinner plates and sharp hooks on some of their suckers. The new specimen weighs in at an estimated 990 pounds (450 kilograms).
The sea monster had become entangled while feeding on Patagonian toothfish (toothfish photos) caught on long lines of hooks. The crew then maneuvered the squid into a net and painstakingly hauled it aboard—a two-hour process.
The world’s smallest and rarest pig, which was once feared extinct, is to be reintroduced to the wild. Pygmy hogs were thought to have been wiped out in the 1960s until two small populations were found in northern Assam in India in 1971.
A conservation programme that began at Durrell Wildlife in Jersey in 1995 when six were captured for breeding has been so successful that 70 of the 12in-tall hogs now fill the holding pens and the first 10 are to be released into the wild later this year.”
Be sure to visit the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust’s website. Click the links in the left bar to see this, and other species they are working to save.
Read Gerald Durrell’s absolutely fantastic and marvelous (not to mention funny) books. He is the absolute origin of my passion for wildlife, folks. If you haven’t read “My Family and Other Animals” about his childhood growing up and collecting creatures on the island of Corfu, or “Catch Me a Colobus” about one of his hilarious adventures to collect species in the wilds of Africa…. well, if you haven’t yet, you are most certainly missing out! Trust me on this.
*Note: The book links above are to the Amazon reviews, but they are both available from the Trust’s website along with excellent videos and more. Purchasing there benefits them- and the animals- directly.
June 26, 2007
Original Article by Christine Dell’Amore
National Geographic News
“…The rare recurve-billed bushbird, recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia after a 40-year absence, sports a curving beak that gives the illusion of an enigmatic smile.
This photograph, taken by a conservationist with the Colombia-based nonprofit Fundación ProAves, is the first ever taken of a live bushbird.
The elusive species had not been spotted between 1965 and 2004, due to its limited range and remote habitats. It was seen recently in Venezuela and in a region of northeastern Colombia, where it was photographed. …”
Read entire article at National Geographic.com
A native Indonesian fisherman reeled in a 4-foot, 110 pound mystery from the deep.
Yustinus Lahama captured the fish—which scientists not long ago believed had gone extinct with the dinosaurs—Saturday near Bunaken National Marine Park, off Sulawesi island.
The 7-inch (18-centimeter) creature is not a serpent at all, but actually a completely new species of limbless lizard, said Sushil Kumar Dutta of North Orissa University.
“The lizard is new to science and is an important discovery. It is not found anywhere else in the world,” Dutta told the Associated Press.
After geologist Benoit Beauchamp’s previous journey to the arctic turned up a massive sulphur-coated glacier spring on Ellesmere Island, scientists are curious to know more about the natural oddity.
Early testing showed the glacier spring contains new forms of bacteria and an extremely rare mineral known as vaterite. The bacteria have survived in one of the coldest and harshest environments on Earth and scientists say nothing like it has ever been found before.
“That yellowish stain has attracted the attention of NASA and the Canadian Space Agency because it has a link to extraterrestrial life,” Beauchamp, the executive director of the Arctic Institute of North America, told Canada.com. “What we’re finding more and more is there is life within the ice and beneath the ice.” Full Article…
A bizarre crustacean, tagged the ‘musical furry lobster’, has been found in Australian waters for the first time.
It’s so unusual, with a furry shell and the ability to chirp, that scientists have placed it in its own genus.
But the lobster was almost lost to science.
Rumour has it the French researchers who discovered the world’s first specimen in the 1980s didn’t realise its significance. So, they ate it for dinner.
Fortunately, the first one found in Australia is alive and well. It’s on display at Townsville’s Reef HQ aquarium, run by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
“DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Swiss researchers have discovered the 100,000 year old remains of a previously unknown giant camel species in central Syria.
“This is a big discovery, a revolution in science,”. Professor Jean-Marie Le Tensorer of the University of Basel told Reuters. “It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago.”
“Can you imagine? The camel’s shoulders stood three metres (yards) high and it was around four metres tall, as big as a giraffe or an elephant. Nobody knew that such a species had existed.”"
Canadian researchers have found a new species (and genus) of ichthyosaur—a type of fishlike reptile that lived between 250 and 90 million years ago.
They found it under a Ping-Pong table.
Researchers at Edmonton’s University of Alberta made the discovery when they came across a long-forgotten box of fossils in an undergraduate science lab.
Officially named Maiaspondylus lindoei, and dubbed the Ping Pong Ichthyosaur, the intrepid fossil-hunters are being pragmatic about the find:
“It was pretty amazing to realize this valuable discovery had sat under a ping pong table for 25 years,” said Dr. Michael Caldwell, paleontologist at the U of A. “But I suppose that after 100 millions of years in the dirt, it’s all relative.”
The bones belong to two juvenile ichthyosaurs, one slightly larger than the other, and two adults, one of which has two embryos preserved near its vertebrae.
The embryos found with the specimens are by far the newest known—80 million years more recent than the oldest previously known ichthyosaur embryos.
“What was really interesting was that at this point in history the Ichthyosaur goes extinct,” said Caldwell. “So anything from this time is going to be really important.”
A teenage surfer in Australia noticed something sticking out of a boulder.
When researcher Erich Fitzgerald began studying the fossil, he soon realized it was an entirely new Family of whale species!
(Image: R Start/Museum Victoria)
From the article:
“Fitzgerald found that the fossil had specific features in the facial region and the base of the skull that marked it as a member of the baleen whale group, which today includes the enormous blue whale.
But unlike modern baleen whales, which eat by filtering tiny krill and plankton from water, the fossil whale had teeth. It also had enormous eyes.
He says it was impossible to fit the fossil whale into existing branches of the evolutionary tree based on its shape, size and characteristics.
“This is something completely new. This was an entirely new family, which is a rare occurrence.”
This new family of small, highly predatory, toothed baleen whales has been named in honour of the town of Jan Juc and its discoverer Staumn Hunder. It is called Janjucetus hunderi.
“…they were truly bizarre, and living in ways completely unlike any baleen whales that have existed over the past 20 million years.”
“HAVANA, Sept. 25 - With its long snout and tiny body covered with spiky, long brown hair, the worm-munching creature known as Solenodon cubanus long has been a mystery to zoologists, who believed it to be extinct. But a farmer in eastern Cuba recently found the first live specimen of the ancient and enigmatic creature seen in four years, local media said.
The find proved conclusively that Solenodon cubanus still survives, and raised hopes that the curious animal dubbed “Alejandrito” may have other relatives roaming the island. more…“
You are currently browsing the archives for the Unusual Nature category.
Positive Change via Positive News This site brings together just a few of the hundreds and hundreds of new species discovered since the year 2000.
Hopefully, it will inspire us to see the world as a place still being explored, and give us the courage to conserve and protect the fragile, shrinking areas of habitat left on Earth...
areas which, as we see here, contain creatures we haven't even yet Imagined...
7 Comments | 
All Articles, Amphibians & Reptiles, Fresh/Marine Aquatic, New Species, Unusual Nature | 
Permalink
Posted by zaxy
From BBC news:
From Yahoo news:
October 4, 2007 
Excerpt from an
November 2006
A new species of squid, Promachoteuthis sloani, found along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Credit: MAR-ECO/R. Young”
Jan 07, 2003
From an original article by Christine Dell’Amore
Scientists at Holar University College and the University of Iceland have discovered two species of groundwater amphipods (one of which is in its own family). These are currently the only species known to be endemic to Iceland.
From an article by
Excerpt from
Furry lobster feels like felt,
Canadian researchers have found a new species (and genus) of ichthyosaur—a type of fishlike reptile that lived between 250 and 90 million years ago.
