New Species

Chicken-Eating Tarantula Discovered

Martin Nicholas, a water treatment plant salesman, who has a passion for searching for giant spiders, may have discovered a new species, the “Chicken-Eating Tarantula” (shown above). Nicolas found that the mother spider of this new species was about 10 inches across. This compares well with the record spider, which is 11.8 inches, for the Goliath spider of Venezuela. Martin Nicholas’ interview in Nature gives insights into how he heard about and tracked down this possible new species: It started a few years back with a letter from a friend in Peru who built power plants. He heard this story [...]

California “Sea-Ape”?

A California Mermaid – The account of the voyage of Hernando Grijalva to the Gulf coast of Lower California, (1823,) describes a mermaid which Grijalva professed to have seen. The object[,] when seen near by, resembled nothing more than a monkey. It leaped out of the water and jumped back again, with its hands moving very quickly, and then looked us in the face; floating in the water as in an attude [sic] of sitting, until a bird disturbed it, when it dived down again and came up on a short distance from us; we saw it for more than [...]

The Many Firsts of The Borneo Rhino Images

Dicerorhinus sumatrensis harrissoni Earlier on Cryptomundo, Craig Woolheater uploaded the video footage of the Borneo rhinoceros, here. Now the media is taking video captures from the footage and publishing them. Some who are not reading too carefully will think there is “new” news of the filming of a Borneo Rhino, but this is merely the continued cycling of an updated Reuters dispatch about the recent announcements from April. For example, The Daily Times of Pakistan for May 7, 2007, is reporting that the two-horned Borneo rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis harrissoni), a subspecies of the Sumatran rhino, has been filmed (see video [...]

The Heart of Darkness: Vanishings, Pygmy Elephants, and Mokele-Mbembe

Mokele-mbembe being killed by Pygmies; drawn by Bill Rebsamen and used with permission. As I write these words, there is news that an airliner from Kenya has crashed in the jungles of Cameroon. They can’t find the plane. They can’t find any survivors because they can’t find the plane. It has disappeared, perhaps near some small village some distance from Douala, which is a coastal hopping off spot into the jungle. Mokele-mbembe courtesy of Bill Rebsamen. Click on image for a larger view. The Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which was carrying 114 people from more than 20 countries, went missing on [...]

New Zealand Skink

NEW DISCOVERY: A handful of never-before-seen lizards has been discovered in The Sinbad Valley, tucked away in a corner of Fiordland. Skink discovery excites scientists Hollywood has its dinosaur-infested lost islands, now one of New Zealand’s last unspoilt wildernesses can boast a few reptilian surprises of its own. The Sinbad Valley, tucked away in a corner of Fiordland, has revealed a range of weird and wonderful new species over the years, including wetas and other insects. But now a handful of never before seen lizards – distant relatives of dinosaurs – have set scientists’ pulses racing. Landcare Research biologist Trent [...]

Laotian Rock Rat: Definitely A Living Fossil

The Laotian rock rat (Laonastes aenigmamus) is a living fossil. New DNA results confirm it is the last surviving member of a once-large group of rodents that was known only by fossils, which supposedly vanished from the fossil record 11 million years ago. Surprise, this is the mammalian version of the coelacanth. Nobel Intent, at Ars Technica’s science-centric journal, summarizes the findings: DNA sequence analysis has now joined the argument and comes down strongly in favor of the living fossil contention. Not only is the rock rat like nothing we’ve ever seen before, it’s not much like anything we’ve ever [...]