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A 20-million-year-old bat fly was discovered in a mine in the Dominican Republic, the first fossilized fly of its type ever found. Its descendants are still around, sucking blood from modern bats, but scientists did not know how far back these parasites existed. But what’s even more enlightening is that this fly carried an ancient strain of bat malaria, of a species new to science. George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University found the fly, and also found the malaria while examining the fly under a microscope.
Before he became a specialist in ancient diseases inside equally ancient bugs, Poinar had worked on attempting to extract DNA from insects trapped in amber—work which author Michael Crichton has acknowledged as part of his inspiration for Jurassic Park.
But no ancient bats will be reconstructed from this specimen, even if it were possible.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Poinar said, “this specimen is so rare that we wouldn’t want to attempt to try it.”
Read more about the bat fly at National Geographic News. Link
Look at the size of this moth -it’s 11 inches across! This is the Atlas moth, the largest moth species in the world. The wings have transparent “windows” that are not holes, but translucent tissue. See many more pictures of this gorgeous moth at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user fabianfred)
A prehistoric creature found in the Canadian Rockies has been named Siphusauctum gregarium, which is both a new genus and species. It lived 500 million years ago, when the area now nickenamed the “Tulip Beds” was underwater.
Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx – a bulbous cup-like structure – near the top which encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Siphusauctum lived in large clusters, as indicated by slabs containing over 65 individual specimens.
Lorna O’Brien, a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto and her supervisor Jean-Bernard Caron, curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, report on the discovery today in the online science journal PLoS ONE.
“Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals. Recent advances have linked many bizarre Burgess Shale animals as primitive members of many animal groups that are found today but Siphusauctum defies this trend. We do not know where it fits in relation to other organisms,” said O’Brien.
(Image credit: Royal Ontario Museum)
A newly-discovered frog, Paedophryne amauensis, is not only the smallest frog species, but the smallest vertebrate ever found. The frogs were found in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, living among fallen leaves. They are 7 millimeters long, about a quarter of an inch.
They are well camouflaged among leaves on the forest floor, and have evolved calls resembling those of insects, making them hard to spot.
“The New Guinea forests are incredibly loud at night; and we were trying to record frog calls in the forest, and we were curious as to what these other sounds were,” said research leader Chris Austin from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, US.
“So we triangulated to where these calls were coming from, and looked through the leaf litter.
“It was night, these things are incredibly small; so what we did after several frustrating attempts was to grab a whole handful of leaf litter and throw it inside a clear plastic bag.
“When we did so, we saw these incredibly tiny frogs hopping around,” he told BBC News.
The frog pictured is sitting on a dime. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: Rittmeyer et al)
When it comes to “discovering” new species of animals, I think it’s more about having found where they’ve been hiding themselves from humanity and less about discovering brand new species.
I mean, most of the animals in this gallery look like the result of genetic evolution and adaptation, not some brand spanking new little critter.
But they are cute, and great fun to read about, considering that they’re so rare to see in nature. So take a look at this gallery and see what the animal guides were missing up until last year.
Link image credit: Indraneil Das
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This, friends, is a shrimp. Yes, it’s called a harlequin shrimp, for good reason because it doesn’t look like any shrimp you’ve ever been served. They’re too small to eat, but are deadly predators to starfish. The harlequin shrimp is one of 6 strange-looking species you’ll find in this list at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user MoToTo)
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The pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is an American animal that is often called a pronghorn antelope, but it not an antelope. In fact, the pronghorn is as more closely related to giraffes than it is to antelopes! The taxonomy of the pronghorn classifies it as the only member of the family Antilocapridae. Oh, there used to be several species in the family, but that was way back before humans arrived in the New World. Read more about this unique species at The Ark in Space. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Tony Case)
This photo shows a replica of Bocydium globulare, the Brazilian Treehopper. It’s a real insect -scout’s honor! See more pictures of this treehopper and other bizarre bugs at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: Alfred Keller for Berlin’s Naturkundemuseum)
Take a museum tour like none you’ve ever seen! Astonish Me is a short film about newly-discovered species created by writer Stephen Poliakoff and director Charles Sturridge to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). Link -Thanks, Danny Smits!
These frogs aren’t going to give up their legs lightly. Species of frog are rapidly evolving adaptations, such as the small fangs they’ve grown, on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and scientists are amazed by how far they’ve come in such a short period of time. One reason is their lack of competition on the island, another reason being the frogs that live on the island all dwell within their own individual pocket, so as to avoid further rivalry over food. Nine species of frogs on Sulawesi have never been documented by scientist before, and thirteen species have developed the cute little choppers, making them look like something out of a Twilight-Muppets crossover. There’s lots more to read on the subject at PhysOrg.com.
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There has not been a recorded sighting of the Bornean rainbow toad (Ansonia latidisca) since 1924. Now, researchers announce they have seen three of them in the Penrissen region of Borneo, and they have photographs to prove it.
Initial searches by Indraneil Das of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and colleagues took place during evenings after dark along the high rugged ridges of the Gunung Penrissen range of Western Sarawak. The first few months proved fruitless; so the team decided to include higher elevations in their search. And one night last August on of Das’ graduate students, Pui Yong Min, found one of the three gangly toads up a tree.
If you want to see newly rediscovered frog, however, it’s probably best to look at the photos, as Das has said he won’t divulge the exact site of the rediscovery right now, owing to the intense demand for brightly-colored amphibians by those involved in the pet trade.
The effort was part of the global search for lost amphibians by Conservation International, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Amphibian Specialist Group, with support from Global Wildlife Conservation. The large search involved 126 researchers who scoured areas in 21 countries, on five continents, between August and December 2010.
Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: © Indraneil Das)
Not all spiders are dangerous, but those that are can be pretty scary! The good news is that the most venomous spiders are not found in one place, but are spread all over the globe. The bad news is that there’s probably at least one of these species on your continent! Pictured is the Fringed Ornate Tarantula (which sounds like a home decor item). Learn about all ten spiders at Environmental Graffiti. Link
Artist Iori Tomita produces theses colorful transparent specimens not by photo editing, but by transforming the animals themselves.
…Tomita first removes the scales and skin of fish that have been preserved in formaldehyde. Next he soaks the creatures in a stain that dyes the cartilage blue. Tomita uses a digestive enzyme called trypsin, along with a host of other chemicals, to break down the proteins and muscles, halting the process just at the moment they become transparent but before they lose their form. The bones are then stained with red dye, and the brilliant beast is preserved in a jar of glycerin. The extensive production takes five months to a year, but the result is an arresting look at the inner workings of underwater life.
See more of Tomita’s work at Wired magazine. Link -via Everlasting Blort
As amazing as human eyes are, other species have developed ways of seeing that will astound you.
Scientists are discovering new structures and adaptations all the time. There are eyes with mirrors, eyes with optical fibres, and eyes with bifocal lenses. There are eyes that see in the dark, move around heads, or go into sleep mode. There are even eyes made of rock. This slideshow will take you on a tour of some of these recent eye-opening discoveries.
Pictured is a box jellyfish, which has 24 eyes of two different types. Link
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One year ago today, a devastating earthquake shook Haiti. An expedition from Conservation International went to Haiti in October to see how the forest ecosystem was affected. Amphibian Conservation Officer Dr. Robin Moore and Dr. Blair Hedges from Pennsylvania State University led the search for endangered species, particularly for the La Selle grass frog, which hadn’t been seen since 1985.
Although they didn’t find the “lost” frog in question, the week-long expedition did unearth 23 of Haiti’s 49 known native frog species — six of which hadn’t been seen in 19 years. Among the rediscoveries: the ventriloquial landfrog (Eleutherodactylus dolomedes), which was previously only known from a few specimens. As its name implies, this species can project its voice to sound as if it’s coming from somewhere else, making it extremely difficult to locate. Moore and the other researchers spent hours trying to home in on one individual.
During the survey, individuals from 10 Critically Endangered species were collected for a captive breeding program at the Philadelphia Zoo. This captive population will preserve the species (and allow for possible reintroduction) if the wild populations are wiped out — an assured outcome if deforestation is allowed to continue.
“The biodiversity of Haiti, including its frogs, is approaching a mass extinction event caused by massive and nearly complete deforestation,” said Dr. Blair Hedges. “Unless the global community comes up with a solution soon, we will lose many unique species forever.”
At the Conservation International website, you can hear the sounds of the ventriloqual frog and the Macaya burrowing frog shown here, and see pictures of all the rediscovered amphibians. Link
(Image credit: © Robin Moore/iLCP)
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The headline is Cracked’s way of saying that humans have introduced invasive species to places where they wrecked the ecosystem. Some of these were accidental; others were caused by the silliest of reasons.
In the late 19th century, a group called the American Acclimatization Society released about a hundred starlings in New York City’s Central Park as part of a project to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays into America. Even knowing nothing about starlings, you may recognize this as an idea that is both baffling and terrible.
Of course, the birds just took over.
The released birds went on to reproduce like mad, increasing their numbers to somewhere around 200 million. By all accounts, starlings are natural terrors. They will force other birds out of their nests and eat their eggs. They swarm in those massive flocks, just eating absolutely everything they can fit in their beaks, stealing food from other species and wreaking havoc on agriculture.
And that’s just the first of eight stories! Contains NSFW text. Link
National Geographic posts many lists in December rounding 
up up the top ten of subjects you won’t find anywhere else. The Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010 has quite a few we’ve posted about, but seeing them all in one gallery is almost startling. Yes, the tiny purple octopus is there, and the snub-nosed monkey, and this friendly-looking bat.
This tube-nosed fruit bat—which became a Web sensation as “Yoda bat”—is just one of the roughly 200 species encountered during two scientific expeditions to Papua New Guinea in 2009, scientists announced in October.
Though seen on previous expeditions, the bat has yet to be formally documented as a new species, or even named. Like other fruit bats, though, it disperses seeds from the fruit in its diet, perhaps making the flying mammal crucial to its tropical rain forest ecosystem.
Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
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Vietnamese herpetologist Ngo Van Tri noticed something strange about the tanks of lizards at the small diners in the village of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. They were all female, which is odd for the species Leiolepis ngovantrii, which is what they were thought to be. So he called a friend and fellow scientist at La Sierra University in California.
Dr. Lee Grismer and his son, Jesse Grismer, a doctoral candidate, flew all the way to Hanoi and then faced a grueling two-day motorcycle trip out to a restaurant where the owner promised to set aside a stash of the creatures for study.
But there was a little problem, says Grismer.
“Unfortunately, the owner wound up getting drunk, and grilled them all up for his patrons… so when we got there, there was nothing left.”
Faced with an empty tank and nearly dashed hopes, the men asked around at other cafes in the area for the local delicacy, and hired children to track down as many of the lizards as they could find.
What they received were 60 females -of a previously unknown lizard species that reproduces without males! Still, Grismer was obliged to eat some lizards to show proper etiquette to the local restaurant. How does it taste?
“You take a bite out of it and it feels like something very old and dead in your mouth,” he said.
(Image credit: Lee Grismer/La Sierra University)
This pink-eyed katydid lives in the forest canopy in Papua New Guinea. It is one of the over 200 new species discovered by the Conservation International expedition to the Muller Range mountains last year. See more of the new species of frogs, ants, spiders, mammals, and plants, and videos of the expedition at Conservation International. Link -Thanks, Lindsay Walter-Cox!
(Image credit: © Piotr Naskrecki/iLCP)
We are in the midst of the Discovery Channel’s annual celebration known as Shark Week. In honor of the occasion, here’s a look at the strangest species of sharks, both living and extinct.
(Image credit: Flickr user Gore Fiendus/Jerry Frausto)
There are seven known species of sawsharks (Pristiophoriformes) that have long snouts with teeth, but they are not related to sawfish (although sawsharks are fish). They swim along the floor of the ocean and use their snouts exactly as you would imagine: they smack their prey sideways to disable them. Sawsharks eat squid, crustaceans, and small fish. They look much more dangerous than they are.
The basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is the second-largest of all living shark species, with only the whale shark growing larger. They normally grow to 20-26 feet long, with the biggest confirmed specimen measuring over 40 feet long! They have mouths up to three feet wide, which they hold open while swimming. That’s because they are filter feeders that scoop up plankton, crustaceans, and small fish as they swim.
(Image credit: Flickr user David Biesack)
There are eight or nine different species of hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna), named for their unusual shape. The reason behind the peculiar shape of the shark’s head was debated for many years. Scientists speculated that the distance between the shark’s eye gave it some kind of advantage. Recent research confirms this. Hammerhead sharks can see a range of 360 degrees vertically. They can easy see behind them with a slight turn of the head, and most importantly, their two eyes have a huge overlap of field compared to other sharks, indicating they have excellent binocular vision. Hammerhead sharks are able to judge distances well by sight alone. They also differ from other sharks in that they tend to swim in schools and they can develop a tan when exposed to sunlight.
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has declared the top 10 species discovered in 2009.
This one to the left is a strange one: the bomb-dropping worm (Swima bombiviridis) that "has these green gills it can kind of throw off, and the predator will follow the gill instead of following the [worm], so it is tripping up the predator."
Check out the entire list, which includes a rat-eating plant, a psychedelic flat-faced frogfish, and a translucent Dracula fish: Link
Interspecies sex doesn’t always result in offspring that are infertile, like a mule. A fruit bat found in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean, Artibeus schwartzi, is a hybrid that has descended from three different species.
Peter Larsen from Texas Tech University confirmed the bat’s unique ancestry by sequencing DNA from 237 individuals belonging to the seven fruit bat species of the Lesser Antilles. He found that A.schwartzi’s main genome is a cross between those of two other fruit bats, A. jamaicensis and A. planirostris, with a tiny minority of sequences that don’t match either genome.
Complicating matters, animal cells also have a separate smaller genome, housed in energy-providing structures called mitochondria. But A.schwartzi’s mitochondrial genome doesn’t resemble that of either of the two species that gave rise to it. These accessory genes must have come from yet another source – a third species of fruit bat that has either since gone extinct or that hasn’t been discovered yet.
Hybrid species that came from a mashup of two other species are rare enough, but three is very rare indeed. Link
Symbion pandora is a species of animal that lives on the whiskers of a lobster, feeding off the crumbs of its meals. Discovered in 1995, Symbion is so different from other species that it was assigned its own phylum, Cycliophora. It is only a half a millimeter long, but has reproductive habits that belong in science fiction. An adult can produce any of three types of offspring: pandora larva, prometheus larva, or female.
The Pandora larva develops into another feeding adult – a straightforward case of asexual reproduction. By contrast, the female remains inside the adult and awaits a male – but, attentive readers will be crying, what male?
The answer lies in the Prometheus larva. This attaches itself to another feeding adult, then produces two or three males from within itself. These dwarf males, which are even more internally complex than the other stages, seek out the females and fertilise them – though the details are unknown.
Once the female has been fertilised, she leaves the adult’s body and hunkers down in a sheltered region of the lobster’s mouthparts. Her body, no longer needed, turns into a hard cyst. Inside this, a fertilised egg develops into yet another stage: the chordoid larva.
In due course this larva hatches and swims off to colonise another lobster. Once it has attached itself to one, it develops into another adult and the cycle begins again.
So that’s adult, male, female, pandora, prometheus, and chordoid, all stages or sexes of one species. Got that? Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: Peter Funch)
The Scottish wildcat, also known as the Highland tiger, is so reclusive that scientists don’t know much about it. Camera traps set in the Cairngorms National Park are now yielding pictures of the cats that may help conservationists protect the animal.
The research is being led by Dr David Hetherington of the Cairngorms National Park Authority.
He told BBC Scotland: “Wildcats are very shy, secretive animals. They are active mainly at night and it’s really difficult for people to get close enough to watch them properly.
“These camera traps are an excellent way of us getting a much better insight into where wildcats live, when they’re active, and what habitat they’re using.
“We can also get an idea of where they don’t live and, of course, that’s also really important information.”
Experts believe the Scottish wildcat population has fallen to about 400, and work is under way to prevent the species becoming extinct.
The biggest threat to the wildcat’s survival as a species is their tendency to interbreed with domestic cats. The Scottish wildcat is the last wild feline predator in Scotland. Link -via ForteanTimes
(image credit: Neil Anderson)
From analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from a pinky finger bone, scientists have identified a new species of human ancestor. The 40,000-year-old bone fragment was found in a cave in the Altay mountains in Russia. The mitochondrial DNA shows that the person (they believe it was a child) it belonged to was neither Neanderthal nor Homo sapiens, but shared a common ancestor to both. University of Manchester geneticist Terry Brown co-authored an article released with the report in the journal Nature.
The new-human discovery implies that there was a wave of human migration out of Africa, the birthplace of humanity, that was completely unknown to science.
“We think Homo erectus”—an upright-walking but small-brained early human, or hominid—”was the first [hominid] to leave Africa two million years ago,” Brown explained. After that the record went blank until about 500,000 years ago, until now.
“This hominid seems to have left about a million years ago, so it fills in a bit of a gap,” he said.
Researchers will try to extract nuclear DNA from the bone, which carries more information than mitochondrial DNA. Link
(image credit: Johannes Krause)
Giants once roamed the earth, meaning many species of animals that are familiar to us have enormous extinct ancestors. Cracked looks at seven of them, some of which have been previously featured individually at Neatorama. Take a look at Argentavis magnificens.
As if answering the dare to make us feel more inadequate, the world gave us Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird in recorded history. These beasts possessed a wingspan between 19- and 26-feet, and a wing area of 75-feet, which you may notice is only slightly smaller than a Lear Jet. In addition to its staggering size and 240-pound weight, the bird is believed to have swallowed prey as large as cattle in one fell swoop.
Link -via Gorilla Mask
How did whales manage to grow so big? And is there a limit to how big they can get? Scientists looked at the mechanics of how whales feed, especially those species that consume tiny krill. They call what they discovered “lunge-feeding”, which is detailed in an article at Discover Magazine.
In order to make lunge-feeding work, you have to have a really big mouth to capture enough water in one gulp. But in order to have a big mouth, you need a big body. And in order to keep that big body running, you need to get a lot of food. And in the very act of getting that food–diving deep, lunging open-mouthed, and then pushing a school-bus-sized volume of water forwards–requires a lot of energy on its own.
This type of feeding might explain the size of whales.
If the scientists are right, they may have discovered one of the big ironies in evolution. Lunge-feeding may have allowed whales to become the biggest animals ever to roam the planet. But this was not an open-ended invitation.r. Once whales got large enough, lunge feeding itself became so costly it prevented them from getting any bigger.
A tree snail found in the tropical forest near Cairns, Australia has been named after the late Steve Irwin. Dr. John Stanisic of the Queensland Museum named it Crikey steveirwini.
The scientist described Crikey steveirwini as “a colourful snail, with swirling bands of creamy yellow, orange-brown and chocolate giving the shell an overall khaki appearance”.
“It was the khaki colour that immediately drew the connection to the late Crocodile Hunter,” Dr Stanisic said.
Enjoy this piece on Scienceray about the wonderful Giraffe-Necked Antelope of East Africa. Just as their taller friends have evolved to get to the higher branches of green in a barren landscape, this unique species also took to the higher branches of smaller flora.
It’s also obvious, but worth pointing out ~ they’re as cute as all getout.
They will use their forelegs to pull down branches that are even higher than they are and can get to tender new leaves that other animals cannot. As a plus, the GNA does not need to drink water at all – it gets all the moisture it needs from the plants they devour.
Link |Image by Flickr user nonisense.
The BBC’s natural history unit sent an expedition to Mount Bosavi, a volcano in Papua New Guinea. Scientists on the team identified 40 new species of wildlife which have called the crater home since its last eruption 200,000 years ago. These include the 3-pound Bosavi Woolly Rat which can grow up to 32 inches long! They also found colorful new birds, beetles, spiders, marsupials, and frogs, such as the Litoria sauroni pictured.
The habitat in the area is currently regarded as pristine, but less than 20 miles to the south of Mount Bosavi extensive logging operations are happening.
The mountain acts like an island in the vast sea of jungle, trapping different species on it.
(image credit: BBC)
