Posts Tagged ‘new species’

Rare Creepy Crawler: Super-Sized Spider Discovered

Orb weaver spider

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.

850 New Species Found Underground

In the Australian outbacks, 18 scientists have just discovered over 850 new species living underground.

Ginormous Rats, Grunting Fish and Fanged Frogs Found in Remote Rainforest

Rat

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.  

3 New Species Found in Underwater Cave in Canary Islands


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.

Green Bombers: Worms Launch Glow-in-the-Dark Bombs to Distract Prey Under the Sea

Clown Anemone Fish  in Sea Anemone

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. 

Madagascar: A Biodiversity “Hot Spot” for Amphibians

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.

Madagascar Coup Threatens Bio-diversity “Hot Spot”

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.

Scientists Discover Dragon

Varanus lirungensis

A new species of monitor lizard closely related to the Komodo dragon has been discovered by German scientists in Indonesia.

The discovery was made after close examination of the new specimen using morphological characteristics and DNA analysis. Taxonomically classified as Varanus lirungensis, the new species “illustrates the high diversity of monitor lizards in Indonesia,” according to André Koch, who found the lizard.

New Species Found on Shelf - In a Jar

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.)

New Salamander Species Discovered in US

salamander

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.

New Species of Phallus-Shaped Mushroom Is 2 Inches Long, Named After Scientist

Phallus drewesii

Phallus drewesii, named after Dr. Robert Drewes of the California Academy of Sciences, is a 2 inch long phallus-shaped mushroom that grows on wood, smells like rotting meat and curves awkwardly downward.

Upon discovering that the new species would be named after him, Drewes remarked: “It is a wonderful honour and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me. I have been immortalized in the scientific record.”

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