New creatures

As I was scanning through the news this morning, I came across a story on msnbc entitled “Top 10 new species: only the coolest, weirdest – and deadliest – made the list.” Intrigued, I scrolled through the pictures on new life forms that have been discovered in various places on the planet over the last year. Here are a few highlights from the article:
Magaceras briansaltini: this is a new kind of rhinoceros beetle. Rhinoceros beetles are certainly nothing new, but this one has a completely different kind of horn than anyone has ever seen. Well, that’s not completely true – the horn has been seen before, but only in an animated cartoon. Remember Dim, the beetle from the Pixar movie “A Bug’s Life”? This new beetle looks exactly like him – only it’s black, not cartoon blue.
Xerocomus silwoodensis: This new mushroom species was discovered, surprisingly enough, in the relatively high-traffic area of Silwood Campus, a campus of Imperial College in London. Odd, how no one noticed it before this year, isn’t it?
Oxyuranus temporalis: This is the second most poisonous snake ever discovered. The other snakes that compete with this guy in terms of lethality are its 2 closest relatives – the inland taipan snake and the coastal taipan snake (which are ranked numbers 1 and 3 on the scale of snakes you don’t want to bite you). It was found in an isolated region of Australia.
Desmoxytes purpurosea: This one tops the list of these new creatures on my “yuck” scale, because it is a big bug with lots of legs. (You might remember from several of my previous posts that I’m not a big fan of bugs.) It’s a millipede, and what makes this species worthy of note is its shockingly bright pink color. It’s so pink, it almost looks fake – but apparently, its notable color is enough to scare away most would-be predators. That’s good for the predators, of course, since this creature also happens to be very inedible – spiny and poisonous.

The list also had a new jellyfish (highly toxic), a tubular plant (described as “having the appearance of the Michelin man”), and a frog specimen preserved in a museum that is now believed to be extinct in the wild. I knew that this list was merely the 10 new species this particular author found most interesting, and I wondered what other new species have been reported in the last few years that didn’t make the cut. Here are a few of the other new creatures that I’ve come across that I thought were worth note:
Rhynochocyon udzungwensis: This is a new type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi. The size of a house cat, this creature looks a but like a cross between a small anteater and a miniature antelope – 4 spindly legs, a stout, amber-colored body, a grey face, and a long, flexible snout. Despite its name, it’s not really a shrew at all, but a relative of African mammals like elephants and aardvarks. There are some 15 species of sengi previously known, but this one had never been sighted before, until first caught on film in the Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains in 2005.
Melipotes fumigatus: This is the only bird I’ve included in my list. It was discovered in New Guinea, on the same expedition that found numerous other species (including 20 new frogs that I won’t talk about here.) This bird is also known as a smoky honeyeater, and it is the first new bird species to be discovered on New Guinea for nearly 70 years.
And finally, Dendrolagus pulcherrimus: This species is more commonly referred to as the golden-mantled tree kangaroo. Also discovered on New Guinea, it’s the rarest arboreal, jungle-dwelling kangaroo in the world. Actually, I’ve cheated a little by including this species, since it was already known to exist in the Foja Mountains of Indonesia, but this is only the second place in the world that the animal has been sighted. But I included it, because I think it’s the cutest of the entire bunch I’ve looked at!

All in all, hundred of new species have been described over the last year. These creatures run the gamut in type, habitat, size, shape and purpose - parasites, plants, fungi, insects, fish, birds, mammals, and amphibians. Of course, since they’re so new, not much is known about many of them yet! I think it’s amazing that, despite the global nature of today’s world, there are still so many things about our planet that we don’t know. And these mysteries are not always even found in the deep jungles of New Guinea – sometimes they’re found right under our noses, or in the courtyards of the Imperial College in London.