Fishermen in the eastern province of Anhui (near Hefei) have found a wild Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), which is being called a living fossil, and tracks of another, local authorities said on Monday, June 23, 2008. The Chinese or Yangtze alligator is native only to China. It is smaller than the other alligator species, the American alligator, growing to an average of 5 feet (1.5 m) in length. Some Chinese specimens have been known to be 7 feet long. Unlike the American Alligator, the Chinese alligator is fully armored; even the belly is armored which is a feature on only [...]
Sea Monster Quest
As part of an EPSRC funded public understanding of science project, the University of St. Andrews has teamed up with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to produce a website dedicated to the statistics/biology behind whale surveys. Visitors (aged 16 -21) can play a computer game which takes them on a whale survey and explains how whale population numbers are actually estimated. The winner of the computer game (and a friend) can win the chance to go on an actual whale survey in the IFAW sail boat Song of the Whale at the end of the summer. The competition [...]
New Chinese Bird Species Discovered
The Chinese news source Xinhua is announcing on Thursday, June 19, 2008, the confirmed discovery of a new species of bird, the Nonggang babbler or Stachyris nonggangensis. It has a white crescent-shaped patch behind the ear and some grayish-brown spots on the white throat. Apart from that, it’s dark brown all over. It prefers to walk, flying only when frightened. It often feeds on worms and insects in the gaps between rocks. Meet the new species of bird discovered by Chinese ornithologists on a small patch of limestone rainforest on the Sino-Vietnamese border. No ornithologist had sighted the myna-sized bird [...]
More on Caatinga Woodpecker
The following is the uncropped version of the photograph, via the BBC: A lost bird returns. The Caatinga Woodpecker (Celeus obrieni) had not been seen since its discovery in 1926 when Advaldo do Prado came across this one in eastern central Brazil. The country has more globally threatened species than any other. (Image: Guilherme R C Silva/BirdLife) Let us hope for as clear new evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker will be developed soon. My thanks to Arthur Masloski. +++ Update from Mount Desert Islander. I found an article in Portugese with two nice pictures at this web site. From the [...]
Found After 80 Years: Caatinga Woodpecker
Caatinga Woodpecker, Celeus obrieni , the first sighting since 1926. Photo by Guilherme R C Silva. One of Brazil’s long lost birds, known only from a single specimen collected in 1926, has been rediscovered after an absence of 80 years. The rediscovery of the Caatinga Woodpecker (Celeus obrieni) has delighted conservationists worldwide and gives hope for other “lost” birds feared extinct. The single specimen has been considered a subspecies of Rufous-headed Woodpecker also known from South America. However, recently a recent review by ornithologists involved with the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithologists’ Union concluded that dramatic differences [...]
Trailcam Photographs Rare Golden Cat
Chad Arment, noting this is not really a separate species, despite what the media is reporting, passes along this breaking news from Bhutan’s daily Kuensel Newspaper for June 11, 2008: A rare morph of the Asiatic golden cat (the ocelot morph) has been sighted in the high altitude mountains of the Jigme Singye Wangchuck national park, which nature conservationists are calling another feather in the cap of Bhutan’s conservation efforts. The ocelot morph is considered a separate species of wild cat. Two pictures of the rare ocelot morph were captured by an intensive camera trapping exercise targeted for tigers and [...]
Woolly Mammoths: Two Subspecies Discovered
Andrea Thompson, a senior writer at Live Science has written an interesting article on a new subspecies discovery regarding woolly mammoths. Two genetically distinct groups of woolly mammoths once roamed northern Siberia, a new study suggests, with one group dying out long before humans showed up. The finding suggests humans were not the only reason for the beasts’ demise, as some have suggested. Scientists had long thought that woolly mammoths were one large homogeneous group, but an international group of scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA – the DNA in the genes of the mitochondria structures within cells – to paint [...]
Solomons Island: New Fossil Dolphin
It’s party time on Solomons Island. A new species of extinct dolphin is to be named in Calvert this week. The Solomons Island region is on the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay, in Maryland. Solomons Island, specifically, is on the north side of the mouth of Patuxent River, where it meets the Chesapeake Bay. (Solomons Island is not to be confused with the Solomon Islands, a nation in Melanesia, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands.) At 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, June 12, 2008, the Calvert Marine Museum (a typical exhibit is shown above) [...]
Jan-May 2008: 130 New Vertebrates!
Eutropis tammanna (Scincomorpha: Scincidae) Birder, herper, evolutionary biologist, naturalist Nicholas Sly of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, asked himself a question many of us here often ask ourselves. How many new animals have been discovered recently? The only new bird described, to date, in 2008? Zosterops somadikartai (Passeriformes: Zosteropidae) Nick Sly set out to do a little research project to come up with an answer, at least for a small sample. He restricted himself to a manageable goal: only vertebrates, only species that are newly discovered taxa – no splitting of previously known taxa, and only new descriptions for the [...]
Bushnell: $1,000,000 For Bigfoot Trail Cam Photo
Bigfoot? Please click on the trail cam photograph taken on April 30, 2006, in the Mt. Hood National Forest, near The Dalles, Oregon, for a larger image. (Credit to Klindt Kendall and Dianna Martin.) What is it? Sasquatch? Bear? A person? How important are trail cams? They are having more and more impact in discovering elusive known animals and adding to the enigma of cryptids. One region of the world where trail cams routinely document rare creatures like tigers and rhinos is South Asia. Below is footage released May 29, 2008, of a female Javan rhino from Indonesia’s Ujung Kulon [...]
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