New Species

Identikit Used In Cryptozoology Discoveries

Drawings of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda) by artist Stephen Nash were used in Peru to rediscover the primate. The use of identikit illustrations in support of the cryptozoology method is demonstrated often. The objective is to discovery what is already ethnoknown, in terms of local wildlife. Drawings from scratch, under the direction of locals, are a source of primary information. But oftentimes, identikit materials are used in the field for gathering and fine-tuning visual information. Sometimes, if available, a photograph shown to local residents and indigenous peoples is successful in gathering more data on new animals. This is [...]

Saola Update

Here’s an update on the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis). Twenty years after its discovery in the forested mountains of Vietnam, local authorities here have agreed to establish new nature reserves to protect a critically endangered wild ox. As part of a plan to protect the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), the central Vietnamese provinces of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam will create two 121km2 reserves. The reserves will link up with the Bach Ma National Park to cover a continuous protected landscape covering approximately 2,920km2 — stretching from the Vietnamese coast to the Xe Sap National Biodiversity Conservation Area in neighbouring Laos. [...]

New Dwarf Manatee

A new small manatee has been discovered in South America. Please click on the poster above to increase its size for easier reading. For more information on the efforts underway to defend the manatee’s discoverer Marc Roosmalen against the allegedly fictional charges he is facing in Brazil, visit http://www.marcvanroosmalen.org/howtohelp.htm. Thanks to Darren Naish for alerting me to this new species and Marc’s new legal defense site.

New Bird Discovered in Brazil

A beautiful new species, Formicivora antwren from Brazil, has just been discovered. Intriguingly, this bird’s status as a new species was argued based on its distinct vocalizations. A new species of antwren from Bahia, Brazil has recently been described in the journal Zootaxa. Sincorá Antwren Formicivora grantsaui is found only in the campo rupestre vegetation of the Serra do Sincorá between 850 m and 1,100 m in the Chapada Diamantina region. This is an important area that holds other restricted range species such as Grey-backed Tachuri Polystictus superciliaris and Pale-throated Pampa-finch Embernagra longicauda. First observed in 1997, it is closely [...]

Boing Boing Frogs

Nyctibatrachus minimus, the tiny nightfrog of India. Conraua goliath, the goliath frog of West Africa. We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being, by grasping at its stars, or its arts, or its economics. But, if there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.Charles Fort, Lo! After I posted my blog (“Incredibly Tiny Frog Discovered”) on the [...]

Incredibly Tiny Frog Discovered

This newly discovered frog, full-grown, is only 0.3937 inches or 10 mm (or 1 cm) tiny, and is shown above sitting on an Indian 5 rupee coin. Delhi University Systematics biologist S. D. Biju and his colleagues have found this new frog, India’s smallest land vertebrate, in the Western Ghats of Kerala, a mountainous region in the western portion of India. The humid rainforests of the Western Ghats are the perfect habitat for these nocturnal frogs, which enjoy making mating calls from under leaf litter and among the roots of ferns during the monsoon months. The common name for its [...]

Vietnam’s Lost World: 11 More New Species

Eleven new species, including a snake and two butterflies, have been discovered in a remote region of Vietnam known as the ‘Green Corridor’, the WWF reveals Wednesday. Five orchids and three other plants make up the rest of the haul of species new to science. They all appear to be unique to Vietnam’s Annamites mountain range. Ten other plant species, including four orchids, are being examined to check whether they are also new to science. The area in Thua Thien Hue province is already renowned among conservationists following the discovery of several new large mammal species in the 1990s. “You [...]