Imagine a spider about the size of a standard-sized CD! Researchers have discovered a rare super-sized spider.
Once thought to be extinct, the first Nephila komaci spider was first found in an old museum collection in South Africa in 2000. A few years later, another specimen was found at a museum in Austria. No other specimens were found until two females and one male were found in the Tembe Elephant Park in Africa. The discovery is the first new Nephila species since 1879.
A team of biologists and filmmakers have discovered new species of rats, spiders, fish and frogs on a recent expedition deep inside the jungle of Papua New Guinea. The team discovered many exotic creatures, including a ginormous rat, while filming the BBC’s Lost Land of the Volcano.
By Zachary Shahan •
August 28, 2009
Texas A&M professor and world-leading cave researcher, Tom Iliffe, and others discovered numerous new species in an underwater cave a mile long in the Canary Islands recently. The cave was in Lanzarote off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean. One of the species might be one of the oldest crustaceans in the world. It might be about 200 millions years old, from the time of dinosaurs.
There are all kinds of amazing creatures under the sea. Scientists have discovered a strange new species of worm-like creatures that put on quite a colorful display when threatened. Scientists believe the worms, nicknamed “green bombers,” release fluid-filled balloons or spheres from their body as a defense mechanism to distract or confuse prey.
The team asserts, based upon their results, that amphibian diversity world-wide is being under-estimated at an “unprecedented level”. The researchers hope that their “integrative taxonomic survey” approach to specimen analysis will be adopted by other scientists to improve their inventory counts and also buttress other biodiversity preservation initiatives through helping scientists and policy makers prioritize conservation efforts within these hot spots.
Biological and ecological scientists around the world are waiting for stability to return to Madagascar and are using what political muscle they have to convince the new government to restore stability, and to resume and expand its eco-tourism trade. The survival of one of the world’s last, great, biodiversity hot spots depends on it.
By Jake Richardson •
July 16, 2009
A new species of Samoan fruit bat or ‘flying fox’ was discovered at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia by Kristofer M. Helgen, a Research Zoologist and Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Helgen, the lead author of the paper published in American Museum Novitates, noticed the bat within one hour of being on the premises of the Academy of Sciences. (There are about 17 million biological specimens housed at the Academy.)
University of Georgia researchers discovered a two inch long salamander near Toccoa, Georgia. It is reportedly the first discovery of a new four-footed species in the US in fifty years.
It was in the spring of 2007 that the salamander was first discovered, but the details have not been published until this year, in the Journal of Zoology. The first one to be spotted was a female, and later the researchers returned to the creek area of the first discovery, and found a male.
