Newly Discovered: Previously Unknown Animal Species (Not Alleged Cryptids Or Species Believed Extinct)

Duck! It's a new flying squirrel.

There are 52 species of flying squirrels in the world.

The little nocturnal omnivores inhabit most of Earth's forests, including those along eastern North America. But even under the best of circumstances catching a glimpse of the creatures, which use specialized flaps of skin to glide from tree to tree, is difficult. In fact, the animals are so hard to observe, scientists are still finding new ones. The most recent, Biswamoyopterus gaoligongensis, or the Mount Gaoligong flying squirrel, was recently found in the forests of Yunnan Province in Southwest China and described in the journal ZooKeys.

According to a press release, flying squirrels in the genus Biswamoyopterus are the rarest and most mysterious. The first species in the group, the Namdapha flying squirrel, was described in 1981 and is known from only a single specimen collected in India's Namdapha National Park. It has not been seen since. The Laotian flying squirrel was found only in 2013, also from a single creature—one being sold as part of the bushmeat trade. Both animals are pretty large for squirrels, weighing in between 3 and 4 pounds.

So Quan Li of the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences was surprised last year when he came across a Biswamoyopterus squirrel in the Academy’s collection. At first, he believed it was a rare second specimen of the Namdapha squirrel. But closer examination revealed it was quite different. Not only was its coloration dissimilar, but its teeth and other details of its anatomy were distinguishable from the other two species.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...t-flying-squirrel-discovered-china-180972693/
 
Giant Squid And Glow-In-The-Dark Sharks Captured By Researchers Off New Zealand

Source: IFLSCIENCE!
Date: 18 February, 2020

If you’re going to find strange creatures of the deep it’ll be off the coast of New Zealand, where legendary giants have long roamed.

So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that researchers exploring New Zealand’s deep waters on the hunt for elusive glow-in-the-dark sharks and hoki managed to catch an unexpected hitchhiker: a 4-meter (13-foot) giant squid.

Researchers aboard the New Zealand-based National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) research vessel Tangaroa were on an expedition to survey hoki, New Zealand’s most valuable commercial fish, in the Chatham Rise – an area of ocean floor to the east of New Zealand that makes up part of the "lost continent" of Zealandia.

[...]

Though giant squids are very rare, they can be found around the world, from Japan to the Gulf of Mexico, but they most often seem to crop up around New Zealand waters.

“New Zealand is kind of the giant squid capital of the world – anywhere else a giant squid is caught in a net would be a massive deal. But there’s been a few caught off New Zealand," Stevens said in a statement.

“It’s only the second one I’ve ever seen. I’ve been on about 40 trips on Tangaroa, and most surveys are about a month, and I’ve only ever seen two. That’s pretty rare.”

[...]

While the squid was fortuitous, Dr Jérôme Mallefet of UCLouvain, Belgium – the world's leading expert on bioluminescent sharks – was determined to capture and photograph glow-in-the-dark sharks. He even set up a darkroom aboard the RV Tangaroa in anticipation, and was rewarded handsomely with the first evidence of bioluminescent sharks in New Zealand waters.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-a...arks-captured-by-researchers-off-new-zealand/
 
Mugeghalaya home to world's largest cave fish

Source: Times of India
Date: 19 February, 2020

It was white, with translucent fins and tails, and had no eyes. But it caught the attention of Dr DB Harries, a biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, on a caving expedition in Meghalaya's Jaintia Hills.

Something about it stood out. So he went back the following day, with biscuits and a net.

"After several failed attempts, I managed to catch one by putting biscuits in a large bag and sinking it in the pool. I was surprised by how large the fish was, over 40 cm. But I didn't realise at the time it was bigger than any known cave fish.

"It's generally assumed that since food is scarce in caves, animals like fish would be small in size and occur in relatively low numbers. But here, we have one that's over 10 times bulkier than other species of cave fish and in a population of about 100. In one cave," said Harries, a member of the Grampian Speleogical Group, Scotland's largest caving club. Once home, he sent the photos to a cave fish specialist in the UK, who told him it was "something extraordinary" and suggested getting in touch with fish specialists in India. It was then that they realised it was the largest cave fish in the world. But as they studied the fish, they realised there was more.

"The finding is evolutionarily important as this is also the world's first cave-adapted form of the genus Tor (Golden Mahseer, a game fish species found in fast-flowing rivers). This will hold the key to the evolutionary history and biogeography of the fish species and the area," said Rajeev Raghavan from the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, a co-author of the paper.

m.timesofindia.com/city/shillong/meghalaya-home-to-worlds-largest-cave-fish/amp_articleshow/74201666.cms
Link is dead. No archived version found at the Times of India site.

A more extensive report on the discovery can be obtained from National Geographic:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/02/worlds-largest-cave-fish-found-in-india/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Comfortably Numb said:
Mugeghalaya home to world's largest cave fish

Source: Times of India
Date: 19 February, 2020

It was white, with translucent fins and tails, and had no eyes. But it caught the attention of Dr DB Harries, a biologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, on a caving expedition in Meghalaya's Jaintia Hills.

Something about it stood out. So he went back the following day, with biscuits and a net.

"After several failed attempts, I managed to catch one by putting biscuits in a large bag and sinking it in the pool. I was surprised by how large the fish was, over 40 cm. But I didn't realise at the time it was bigger than any known cave fish.

"It's generally assumed that since food is scarce in caves, animals like fish would be small in size and occur in relatively low numbers. But here, we have one that's over 10 times bulkier than other species of cave fish and in a population of about 100. In one cave," said Harries, a member of the Grampian Speleogical Group, Scotland's largest caving club. Once home, he sent the photos to a cave fish specialist in the UK, who told him it was "something extraordinary" and suggested getting in touch with fish specialists in India. It was then that they realised it was the largest cave fish in the world. But as they studied the fish, they realised there was more.

"The finding is evolutionarily important as this is also the world's first cave-adapted form of the genus Tor (Golden Mahseer, a game fish species found in fast-flowing rivers). This will hold the key to the evolutionary history and biogeography of the fish species and the area," said Rajeev Raghavan from the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, a co-author of the paper.

https://m.timesofindia.com/city/shi...argest-cave-fish/amp_articleshow/74201666.cms
Click to expand...
Link doesn't work.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Link doesn't work.
Click to expand...

The link is indeed dead, and I couldn't locate an alternate or archived version on the Times of India website.

See the original post (that you quoted) for a link to a more detailed news story about the cave fish.
 
A salamander named Egoria: Palaeontologists identify new Jurassic amphibian

Source: heritagedaily.com
Date: 20 February, 2020

The palaeontologists found the remains of the ancient amphibian at the Berezovsky quarry, a fossil locality in the Krasnoyarsk Krai near the town of Sharypovo.

Fossils of ancient fish, various reptiles, mammals, herbivorous and predatory dinosaurs have been previously found there. The research materials were collected on field expeditions in the mid-2010s. In these expeditions the scientists from St Petersburg University worked alongside experts from the University of Bonn (Germany), the Tomsk State University, the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Sharypovo Museum of Local History and Nature.

Four vertebrate fossils enabled the scientists to declare the finding of a new genus and species. These were: three trunk vertebrae and the atlas – the first and, in the case of the salamander, the only cervical vertebra. Since the atlas is a highly specialised vertebra, providing for attachment and rotation movements of the skull, it has a rather complex structure, the scientists explain. It is therefore most suitable for describing a new species as it provides much information for analysis. The amphibian proved to have belonged to the geologically oldest stem salamanders.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/...ogists-identify-new-jurassic-amphibian/125787
 
EnolaGaia said:
See the original post (that you quoted) for a link to a more detailed news story about the cave fish.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this. The link was tested, as always, on a preview and again after posting. Can only presume it was removed shortly afterwards!
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Thanks for this. The link was tested, as always, on a preview and again after posting. Can only presume it was removed shortly afterwards!
Click to expand...

That seemed to be the case ... There seems to be a high rate of turnover on that site.
 
Indo-China is a hotbed of new didcoveries.

A new species of bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus phnomchiensis) has been described from Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary by Wild Earth Allies Biologist Thy Neang in collaboration with North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Herpetologist Bryan Stuart. This new species is described in ZooKeys.

The species was discovered by Thy Neang during Wild Earth Allies field surveys in June-July 2019 on an isolated mountain named Phnom Chi in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary when he encountered an unusual species of bent-toed gecko. "It was an extremely unexpected discovery. No one thought there were undescribed species in Prey Lang," said Neang.

https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-bent-toed-gecko-species-cambodia.html
 
They live under the Jailhouse Rock.

A new look at the critters known as “Elvis worms” has the scale worm family all shook up.

These deep-sea dwellers flaunt glittery, iridescent scales reminiscent of the sequins on Elvis’ iconic jumpsuits (SN: 1/23/20). “For a while, we thought there was just one kind of Elvis worm,” says Greg Rouse, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. But analysis of the creatures’ genetic makeup shows that Elvis worms comprise four species of scale worm, Rouse and colleagues report May 12 in ZooKeys.

Rouse’s team compared the genetic material of different Elvis worms with each other, and with DNA from other scale worm species. This analysis places Elvis worms in the Peinaleopolynoe genus of scale worms, which includes two other known species — one found off the coast of Spain, the other off California.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/deep-sea-worms-elvis-species
 
A new diamond frog in the rough.

Despite the active ongoing taxonomic progress on Madagascar's frogs, the amphibian inventory of this hyper-diverse island is still very far from being complete.

The known diversity of the diamond frog genus Rhombophryne in Madagascar has increased significantly (more than doubled!) over the last 10 years, but still there are several undescribed candidate species awaiting description. New species are constantly being discovered in Madagascar, often even within already well-studied areas. One such place is the Montagne d'Ambre National Park in northern Madagascar.

Montagne d'Ambre National Park is widely known for its endemic flora and fauna, waterfalls and crater lakes, and considered to be a relatively well-studied area. Yet, only two studies have been published so far on the reptiles and amphibians of the Park.

Serving the pursuit of knowledge of the herpetofauna in the region, Germany-based herpetologist Dr. Mark D. Scherz (Bavarian State Collection of Zoology, Technical University of Braunschweig, University of Konstanz) published a description of a new diamond frog species: Rhombophryne ellae, in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-diamond-species-frog-northern-madagascar.html
 
No joke as new harlequin frog discovered.

Scientists have discovered a new species of rare frog that is rapidly disappearing. At the same time, they've also discovered hope.

An unstoppable wave of a deadly fungal disease has swept over every continent on earth, leading to mass die-offs of many frogs and amphibians. Harlequin frogs—the brightly-colored jewels of the tropics—have been one of the hardest hit. Critically endangered, several dozen species have vanished over the last three decades. Some are feared extinct.

Despite the devastating disease, a team of scientists working in Peru recently found a never-before-documented species of harlequin frog nestled in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes. While these frogs can only be found in the Central and South America, they had never been spotted in this particular region before. ...

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-frog-killing-disease-frog-species.html
 
The Somali man who has a scorpion named after him
If you were going to have a creature named after you then a scorpion may not be your first choice, but Ahmed Ibrahim Awale believes the Pandinurus awalei will serve as an inspiration to budding Somali scientists.

The 66-year-old scientist from Somaliland has been honoured by the three researchers who discovered the new scorpion species in the region in recognition of his decades of work in conservation and environmental protection.
"Most of the species identified in Somalia and Somaliland are named after a place, a characteristic that a plant or animal may have or somebody from Europe or America," he told the BBC in his lively voice on the line from his office in Hargeisa.
"But for many young people here, it will encourage them to know that this species is named after Awale - after all Awale is a Somali." His pride in having this honour clearly shines through.
Click to expand...
(c) BBC '20.
 
Two new greater glider species discovered: 'Australia’s biodiversity just got a lot richer'


One of the world’s biggest gliding mammals, Australia’s greater glider is actually three separate species, according to new research


One of the world’s biggest gliding mammals, Australia’s once-common and unique greater glider, actually comprises three separate species, according to new genetic research.
Researchers said the findings should prompt urgent work to better understand the three species which are under pressure from rising temperatures, bushfires and land-clearing.
The study adds two new marsupials to Australia’s list of species and creates new challenges for protecting the three animals which are all unique to Australia.
Greater gliders were listed as vulnerable by the federal government even before last summer’s bushfire’s burned about one-third of their habitat
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(c) The Guardian '20
 
Nature truly never ceases to amaze...

Newfound marine blob looks like 'party balloon' with two strings, scientists say

Source: livescience.com
Dare: 1 December, 2020

Deep in an underwater canyon off the coast of Puerto Rico, there's a party of balloon-like sea creatures keeping things festive in the abyssal depths.

Their bodies are small — about the size of a golf tee (just over 2 inches, or 6 centimeters, long) — but they're vibrant; when the creatures move and pulse, rows of tiny hair-like cilia refract light into a prism of shining colors.

Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) first spotted these mysterious party blobs in 2015, sighting three of them near the seabed at a depth of roughly 13,000 feet (4,000 meters). Now, in a paper published Nov. 18 in the journal Plankton and Benthos research, the team has identified the blobs as a new species of ctenophore –- tiny invertebrate predators also known as comb jellies or "sea walnuts" –- called Duobrachium sparksae.

[...]

https://www.livescience.com/balloon-like-comb-jelly-discovered-puerto-rico.html
 
Rare Iridescent Snake Discovered in Vietnam.
Looming limestone mountains called karst formations rise abruptly from rivers, bays and valleys in northern Vietnam. In a region of the world already rich with life, these karsts and the lush green forests that cover them create habitats that support extreme biodiversity. Many of the species are endemic to the area, meaning they only exist there.

In a paper published today in the journal Copeia, researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Institute for Ecology and Biological Resources at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology described a new species of snake that they discovered in the Ha Giang province. The species is part of a rare genus of burrowing snakes that branched from the evolutionary tree earlier than most other groups. Because of this, they look and behave unlike many other snakes and could help scientists piece together new information about snake evolution.

The researchers named the new species Achalinus zugorum in honor of the Smithsonian’s retired curator of reptiles and amphibians, George Zug, and his wife, Patricia Zug.
Click to expand...


(C) Smithsonian Magazine.'20
 
Less detailed iridescent snake story, but better picture.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/asia/vietnam-snake-discovered-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html
201209152112-02-vietnam-new-snake-discovery-exlarge-169.jpg
 
Whale, whale.

Scientists believe they may have discovered a new species of beaked whale off the western coast of Mexico.

A team of researchers working with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society first sighted the creatures three weeks ago, 100 miles north of San Benito Islands. Based on the photographs, video and sound recordings, the experts said they are “highly confident” that the evidence points to a new whale species. The team said that environmental genetic samples, which were collected at the time of the sighting, are expected to confirm the whales to be a previously unknown species.

Dr Jay Barlow, an adjunct professor of biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego, US, said: “We saw something new. Something that was not expected in this area, something that doesn’t match, either visually or acoustically, anything that is known to exist. ..."

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40187793.html
 
Tiny new hermit crab.

Heather Bracken-Grissom is having a crabalicious holiday season.

She was initially asked by Darryl L. Felder, her advisor from her Ph.D. days at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, to provide a DNA sequence for a little hermit crab discovered in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. Less than an inch long and occupying hollow pieces of coral and other rock, the species is easily overlooked. But for someone who has worked on the National Science Foundation's Decapod Tree of Life project, providing a DNA sequence for this little hermit crab was not a problem.

Felder sent Bracken-Grissom a leg from the only sample of the species ever collected. She extracted DNA from the muscle tissue and sent the sequence back to Felder. That's when he called to tell her he was planning to name the species Cancellus heatherae. Actually, he said he had been planning to name it after her all along—a way to honor Brakcen-Grissom's extensive contributions to molecular phylogenetic studies of decapod crustaceans, including works focused on hermit crabs populating the Gulf of Mexico. ...

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-heather-crab-newly-hermit-species.html
 
It took more than a decade after its collection before a researcher discovered a misidentified biodiversity specimen represented not just a new species, but an entirely new genus.
Remarkable New Species of Snake Found Hidden in a Biodiversity Collection – Occupies Its Own Branch on Snake Tree of Life

To be fair, the newly described Waray Dwarf Burrowing Snake (Levitonius mirus) is pretty great at hiding.

In its native habitat, Samar and Leyte islands in the Philippines, the snake spends most of its time burrowing underground, usually surfacing only after heavy rains in much the same way earthworms tend to wash up on suburban sidewalks after a downpour.

So, it may not be shocking that when examples of the Waray Dwarf Burrowing Snake were collected in 2006 and 2007, they were misidentified in the field — nobody had seen them before. The specimens spent years preserved in the collections of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, overlooked by researchers who were unaware they possessed an entirely new genus of snake, even after further examples were found in 2014.

But that changed once Jeff Weinell, a KU graduate research assistant at the Biodiversity Institute, took a closer look at the specimens’ genetics using molecular analysis, then sent them to collaborators at the University of Florida for CT scanning. Now, he’s the lead author on a paper describing the snake as both a new genus, and a new species, in the peer-reviewed journal Copeia. ...
Click to expand...


FULL STORY:
https://scitechdaily.com/remarkable...ccupies-its-own-branch-on-snake-tree-of-life/

PUBLISHED ARTICLE:
https://bioone.org/journals/copeia/...nake-Cyclocoridae-from/10.1643/CH2020110.full
 
A bumper year.

Scientists identify 503 new species in 2020

A monkey which lives on the side of an extinct volcano, a lungless worm salamander and red seaweed are among more than 500 new creatures and species that have been identified by Natural History Museum scientists in the past year.

Lichen, wasps and barnacles to minerals, miniature tarantulas and a monkey make up some of the 503 species from almost all kingdoms of life which have been described and studied for the first time.

They are a “remarkable diversity of life forms and minerals” which can be used to help find new species and as a reference point to spot other specimens, according to Dr Tim Littlewood, the Natural History Museum’s executive director of science. ...

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40198494.html
 
Bats with orange fur, could be used to make toupees for the orange skinned.

Bats, better known for their mousy looks, can have a colorful side. A new species, discovered when two bats were caught at an abandoned miners’ tunnel in western Africa, sports showy swathes of orange fur.

The new finds “are just gorgeous,” says mammalogist Nancy Simmons of the National Museum of Natural History in New York City. Orange fur on the bats’ backs contrasts with black sections of wing membranes.

But that’s not what sets this bat apart: Three other Myotis species from the continent are similarly flashy. Rather less visible traits, from details of hidden striping in its fur to its echolocation calls, peg Myotis nimbaensis as something unusual, Simmons and colleagues report online January 13 in American Museum Novitates.

The new species was discovered the old-fashioned way — out in a remote forest at night with keen eyes studying real animals. That’s not so common nowadays in the age of sensitive genetic tools, Simmons says. Many of the 20 or so new bat species typically named every year are detected through genetic analyses of museum specimen lookalikes. M. nimbaensis differs genetically from near kin — about as much as humans differ from gorillas. Differences also show up in teeth as well as other anatomy. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-orange-black-bat-species-halloween-africa-echolocation
 
ramonmercado said:
Bats with orange fur, could be used to make toupees for the orange skinned.

Bats, better known for their mousy looks, can have a colorful side. A new species, discovered when two bats were caught at an abandoned miners’ tunnel in western Africa, sports showy swathes of orange fur.

The new finds “are just gorgeous,” says mammalogist Nancy Simmons of the National Museum of Natural History in New York City. Orange fur on the bats’ backs contrasts with black sections of wing membranes.

But that’s not what sets this bat apart: Three other Myotis species from the continent are similarly flashy. Rather less visible traits, from details of hidden striping in its fur to its echolocation calls, peg Myotis nimbaensis as something unusual, Simmons and colleagues report online January 13 in American Museum Novitates.

The new species was discovered the old-fashioned way — out in a remote forest at night with keen eyes studying real animals. That’s not so common nowadays in the age of sensitive genetic tools, Simmons says. Many of the 20 or so new bat species typically named every year are detected through genetic analyses of museum specimen lookalikes. M. nimbaensis differs genetically from near kin — about as much as humans differ from gorillas. Differences also show up in teeth as well as other anatomy. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-orange-black-bat-species-halloween-africa-echolocation
Click to expand...

Hmmm......messing about with bats. What could possibly go wrong?
 
The Littlest Lizard.

Scientists believe they may have discovered the smallest reptile on earth - a chameleon subspecies that is the size of a seed.

Two of the tiny lizards were discovered by a German-Madagascan expedition team in Madagascar. The male Brookesia nana, or nano-chameleon, has a body of just 13.5mm. This makes it the smallest of about 11,500 known species of reptiles, according to the Bavarian State collection of Zoology in Munich. Its length from top to tail is 22mm (0.86in). The female is far bigger at around 29mm, the institute said, adding that other specimens were yet to be located, despite "great effort".

"The new chameleon is only known from a degraded montane rainforest in northern Madagascar and might be threatened by extinction," said the Scientific Reports journal.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-55945948?piano-modal
 
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