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

A team of scientists have discovered a new species of rat in Indonesia.

The species, which has been named Hyorhinomys stuempkei - hog-nosed rat - has "distinct and unique features uncommon to other rats", they said.

Five of the rodents were discovered on Sulawesi island earlier in January by researchers from Australia, Indonesia and the US.

Museum Victoria's mammal curator Kevin Rowe said the species was "previously undocumented".

"We were on a mission to survey remote mountains in the area and to put evolution in Asia and Australia into context," Mr Rowe said

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34451265?OCID=twitterasia
 
New species of giant tortoise discovered in Galapagos

Scientists say they have identified a new species of giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific.
They used genetic data to determine that a group of 250 slow-moving reptiles was distinct from another tortoise species on Santa Cruz island.

It is the 15th known tortoise species to be discovered on the archipelago, though four are now extinct.
The new species has been named "Chelonoidis donfaustoi", after a retired Galapagos park ranger.

Giant tortoises in the Galapagos tend to weigh up to 250kg and live longer than 100 years.

Experts had long believed that the two giant tortoise populations on the Santa Cruz island were the same species, but genetic testing proved this to be wrong, Ecuador's environment ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-34600468
 
'Monster' spider discovered in Oregon called Cryptomaster Behemoth

The Cryptomaster behemoth may sound like a villain from a superhero film.
But it's actually a newly-discovered species of spider living in the forests of Oregon in the US.
Californian scientists discovered the spider when they went on an expedition to find out more about its close relative, the Cryptomaster leviathan.
They think the behemoth developed differently when the spider population was divided by mountain ranges.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...overed-in-oregon-called-cryptomaster-behemoth
 
'Monster' spider discovered in Oregon called Cryptomaster Behemoth

The Cryptomaster behemoth may sound like a villain from a superhero film.
But it's actually a newly-discovered species of spider living in the forests of Oregon in the US.
Californian scientists discovered the spider when they went on an expedition to find out more about its close relative, the Cryptomaster leviathan.
They think the behemoth developed differently when the spider population was divided by mountain ranges.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...overed-in-oregon-called-cryptomaster-behemoth
A 'monster' that's all of 4mm long.
Talk about BBC hype.
 
4mm is just their bodies, you have to add in the legs.



ETA:number
 
Behemoth with a body at .156”, really?
Sorry, make that 3.9624mm., as none of the articles I've seen state span but have said variously length and width I think I'm right with saying it's just its body.
If I'm wrong I apologise.
 
Team discovers four new deep-sea worm species

A pink flatworm-like animal known by a single species found in waters off Sweden has puzzled biologists for nearly six decades. New discoveries half a world away by a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Western Australia Museum, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have helped properly identify these elusive creatures through genetic analysis.

In the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature, the researchers describe four newly discovered species living near deep-sea cold seeps, hydrothermal vents, and whale carcasses off the coasts of California and Mexico. The new discoveries have allowed the scientists to finally stabilize the placement of the five species, all in the genus Xenoturbella, on the animal tree of life.

The 10-centimeter (4-inch) long Xenoturbella churro, named for its resemblance to the popular fried-dough pastry, is one of four species recently discovered that lie near the base of the evolutionary tree of animals. It was found in a 1,700-meter (5,577-foot)-deep cold seep in the Gulf of California.

"The findings have implications for how we understand animal evolution," said Scripps marine biologist Greg Rouse, the lead author of the study. "By placing Xenoturbella properly in the tree of life we can better understand early animal evolution."

The animal's shifting position on the tree of life began when the first species, named Xenoturbella bocki, was found off the coast of Sweden in 1950. It was classified as a flatworm, then, in the 1990s as a simplified mollusk. In recent years, Xenoturbella has been regarded as either close to vertebrates and echinoderms, or as a more distant relative on its own branch further away. Knowing whereXenoturbella belongs is important to understand the evolution of organ systems, such as guts, brains and kidneys, in animals. ...

http://phys.org/news/2016-02-team-deep-sea-worm-species.html
 
A nice video of many new species discovered in the 21st century. Includes a couple of good sized animals such as the Giant Peccary from Brazil and the Saola from Indochina.

 
A nice video of many new species discovered in the 21st century. Includes a couple of good sized animals such as the Giant Peccary from Brazil and the Saola from Indochina.


Its the big ones which give me hope that theres more to be found.
 
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Its the big ones which give me hope that theres more to be found.
I mean that's 4 new large animals found this century. The Giant Collared Peccary up to 110 pounds, the Bili Ape up to ~ 200 pounds, the Saola a bovine up to 220 pounds and the Giant Galapagos Tortoises up to 550 pounds.
 
A-saola-photographed-in-t-008.jpg

Photograph: AP
Looking like a small deer, the saola was originally identified as a new species from remains discovered in Vietnam in 1992 but a live animal wasn't discovered until 2010.
 
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The Soala is actually a pretty good sized bovine getting up to ~ 220 pounds.
 
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It turns out that our Vietnamese friend goes by multiple names: as well as saola, there's Vu Quang ox, spindlehorn, and Asian bicorn. And, zoological Latin: Pseudoryx nghetinhensis. "Pseudo-oryx", seemingly -- not a bad description !
 
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A new tadpole that burrows through sand has been discovered in the Western Ghats of India, scientists report.

The researchers' study, published in the journal Plos One, says that tadpoles would not normally burrow through sand, nor swallow the material, but this "remarkable tadpole" does.

It belongs to the Indian Dancing frog family, Micrixalidae.

The study added that the new findings underlined the "uniqueness of amphibians" of the Western Ghats.

A group of scientists from University of Delhi, University of Peradeniya and Gettysburg College discovered and documented the larvae, and genetically confirmed their identity as Micrixalus herrei. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35927354
 
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A new giant species of rat has been discovered on the Manus Island in the South Pacific.

This giant rodent, despite its size and heft, has been lurking there for thousands of years, according to scientists, and has only been discovered recently.

Researchers have published a new study unveiling Rattus detentus in the Journal of Mammalogy ,named after the Latin word for “detained”.

This is because Australia is sending asylum seekers to detention camps on the Papua New Guinean island for processing, and is also a reference to the long time that the rat has been living there itself. ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...overed/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
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A remarkable discovery has been made in a remote area of the Italian Alps: a new species of viper that has quite possibly been hiding in plain sight for many, many years.

You see, that region of the Alps is also home to a snake called the common European adder (Vipera berus). This new species looks remarkably similar to V. berus, enough so that people probably confused the species and assumed they were the same thing.

Well, no more. A paper published last month in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research finds that the new snake—which has been dubbed V. wasler—has several small morphological differences from the common species, most notably a greater number of scales on various parts of its body.

But the differences beneath the surface are even more important. The researchers—from Museo delle Scienze and other institutions—found thatV. wasler has significantly different genetics than the common adder and all other Western European vipers. Its closest genetic relatives, in fact, are actually two viper species living far away in the Caucasus Mountains.

Genetic tests also revealed that the viper experienced a rather severe genetic bottleneck at some point in the past, limiting its current genetic variability.

As for its distribution, the researchers found that the new species doesn’t have a very large range—less than 500 square kilometers, with just two main sites, each in high-rainfall valleys. The nearby common adder, by comparison, ranges throughout Western Europe and into Eastern Asia. The two species live close-by to each other but their ranges do not appear to overlap. ...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/alps-new-viper/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_ENGYSUS_BLOG
 
http://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...on-the-ocean-floor?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

Scientists have found a weird, glowing purple blob on the ocean floor
Strange as it may seem, not absolutely everybody is hunting for rare Pokémon on their phones right now.

While the rest of us are glued to Pokémon Go, working scientists are continuing their quest to find, you know, actual new lifeforms – and a team of marine biologists combing the ocean floor off the coast of Southern California might just have hit pay-dirt, coming across this weird, glowing purple blob.

Discovered by scientists from the Ocean Exploration Trust on the research vessel E/V Nautilus, the purple blob is as yet totally unidentified – creating no small amount of excitement among the researchers as they find it, which you can enjoy in the video above.
 
New species of Pacific beaked whale confirmed
Researchers confirm that as yet unnamed whale sighted by Japanese fishermen was previously unknown to science
Robin McKie Science editor
Saturday 30 July 2016 12.42 BST

Scientists have confirmed that a mysterious, unnamed species of beaked whale roams the northern Pacific Ocean. Sightings of the creature, which has a bulbous head and a beak like a porpoise, had been reported by Japanese fishermen, who call them karasu or ravens, but it was previously unknown to science. It has yet to be given a formal scientific name.

“Clearly this species is very rare and reminds us how much we have to learn about the ocean and even some of its largest inhabitants,” said Phillip Morin, a research molecular biologist at the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). His team revealed the existence of the new species in a paper published in the journal Marine Mammal Science last week.

Japanese researchers sampled three black-beaked whales that had been washed up on the north coast of Hokkaido in 2013 and suggested they could be a new species. Morin and his team at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Research Center in San Diego decided to investigate and seek specimens from a wider area for testing, and to try to match genetic samples to prove the Japanese claim.

“My first idea was to go to our collection, where we have the largest collection of cetacean samples in the world,” he said last week. In the end, the group analysed 178 beaked whale specimens from around the Pacific Rim and found five that matched the whales found by the Japanese team. Crucially, the finds came from sites that ranged across the Pacific.

One skull was found in the Smithsonian Institution after being recovered from the Aleutian Islands in 1948. Another specimen discovered in Alaska was spotted in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and a further sample was obtained from tissue taken from a whale stranded on Unalaska Island in the Aleutians in 2004. Local teachers and students had photographed and measured the animal before putting its skeleton on display at Unalaska high school.

Morin said scientists had more questions than answers about the new species, which is about two-thirds of the size of a Baird’s beaked whale, the cetacean species that the newly identified creature most closely resembles. The largest beaked whales can reach 40 feet (12 metres) and spend up to 90 minutes at a time hunting squid in deep water.

They are hard to research because they may spend only a few minutes at the surface. They rarely breach, travel in small numbers and blend into their surroundings. “They’re hard to see, especially if the water is anything but perfectly calm,” Morin said, adding that acoustic research could help find them so they can be studied.

Japanese researchers are in the formal process of describing the species. This will include giving the whale a Latin and common name and formally defining its measurements and how it differs from other beaked whales.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/new-species-of-pacific-beaked-whale-confirmed

Coincidentally, last night I was watching an iPlayer documentary about whales;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01452jz/ocean-giants-3-voices-of-the-sea (2011)

But obviously this new one wasn't on it. So all the text books and documentaries will have to be updated!
 
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Now here's a surprise!
Giraffe genetic secret: Four species of tallest mammal identified
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

It is a famous, gentle giant of the African savannah, but the giraffe's genetics have just revealed that there is not one species, but four.
Giraffes have previously been recognised to be a single species divided into several sub-species.

But this latest study of their DNA suggests that four groups of giraffes have not cross-bred and exchanged genetic material for millions of years.
This is a clear indication that they have evolved into distinct species.
The study published in the journal Current Biology has rewritten the biology of Earth's tallest mammal.


The scientists say their findings could inform the conservation efforts for all four species of giraffe.
Conservation was the catalyst for this genetic research; the Giraffe Conservation Foundation asked the team to carry out genetic analysis of giraffes in Namibia.

The foundation wanted to understand the genetic differences between different giraffe populations, to see how the animals might be affected if different subspecies were mixed together when animals were moved into protected areas.

What we found then, says Axel Janke, a geneticist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, who led the research, "was that the sub-species were genetically very different and separate.
"I'd never seen that in a population study [of a species] before."

This initial study examined what is known as mitochondrial DNA - a packet of DNA within every cell's "engine". This is useful for population genetics - it can be easily isolated and contains lots of known variants that can track relatedness.
But mitochondrial DNA is not part of the code that builds an animal, so Dr Janke decided to examine and compare parts of that code - the nuclear DNA.
"It turned out, he told BBC News, that, for example, "the whole clade of northern giraffes was very different from reticulated giraffes."

"Our findings indicated four distinct species."
Those four species include:
  • southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa),
  • Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi),
  • reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata)
  • northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), which includes the Nubian giraffe (G. c. camelopardalis) as a distinct but related subspecies.
While giraffes had always been thought to be of one species, Dr Janke likened the difference between one species and another - in terms of their genetic code - to that of a Polar bear compared to a brown bear.

This suggests that each species is adapted for a specific environment or diet - a question that is the subject of his team's next research project.

Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester explained that the "four groups of giraffes had "been separated for 1-2 million years, with no evidence of genes being exchanged between them".
"This is an important finding that will enable conservation biologists to target their efforts and, perhaps, to come up with new conservation approaches in captivity or in the wild, based on the genetic similarities and differences between these groups," Professor Cobb told BBC News.
Dr Janke commented: "We've clearly completely forgotten what a giraffe is." :p

He added that conservation programmes focused on specific species - understanding an animal's life, behaviour and habitat, to inform how it can be protected in the wild.
In the last 15 years, the population of giraffes has declined by 40% - there are now an estimated 90,000 individuals in the wild. But, as a single species, they are classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as of Least Concern.

Now, it is clear that each of these four newly classified species could be faring very differently.
It's important to raise awareness for conservation, said Dr Janke, "to protect his beautiful animal of which we know so little."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37311716
 
Didn't they just do this recently with elephants? Identified separate sub-species?
 
Didn't they just do this recently with elephants? Identified separate sub-species?
With the giraffes, they found that what were previously thought to be sub-species are in fact totally separate species.

Can you provide any info on the current heffalump situation?
 
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