Image: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
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From Nature magazine.
An entirely new family of amphibians has been discovered hiding in the soils of northeastern India.
In total, seven new species of these limbless, soil-dwelling and rather ugly creatures were unearthed by a team of researchers digging for over 1,000 man-hours.
“The discovery adds a major branch to the amphibian tree of life,” note Sathyabhama Das Biju of the University of Delhi, and his colleagues in their paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
These creatures are members of the caecilian order of amphibians, which look more like earthworms than their better-known classmates the frogs and toads, and can grow to be more than a metre long. They build nests underground and brood their young there, as shown above with Chikila fulleri. More than 500 examples of the new family of caecilians were found in 58 locations in northeastern India.
The new species are just the latest triumph for Biju, whose website details some of the 100-plus new species his team has described.
Sadly, as nearly always seems to be the case, the paper describing these new creatures comes with this caveat:
“Further explorations and conservation actions are urgent because the region’s biodiversity is generally under high threat from the growing resident human population and rapid deforestation."
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 22, 2012.
What ever happened to the theory of periodic mass extinctions,
which stated that major extinctions occur every 26 million
years? Is it widely accepted? And when was the last such
extinction--have there really been two of them since the
dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago?
DNA Evidence Weighs In on Ice Age Extinction Debate
A Scientific Argument for Intervening in Nature
6 Comments
Add CommentIts not a new species nor a new discovery. To put it correctly, Scientist has given a name to an un-named amphibian species found in Meghalaya or North Eastern Part of India.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree completely with Sajayl. Nothing on Earth is "new", or "discovered", especially when credit for discovering new stuff is given to neo-colonial oppressors with a history of racist thought and behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlenty of people of all cultures and genders have thought of and discovered all kinds of "new" stuff for thousands of years, only to have credit given to some white guy with a degree.
Constructivist, you do realise that the article refers to a discovery credited to an Indian scientist and his team, in their native country, right? And that it kinda runs counter to your argument that white people get all the credit?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"InquiringConstructivist"'s heart is in the right place. And, technically - Indians are kind of white. They value education and speak English, and maintain the parliamentarian form of government imposed on them by the colonial British exploiters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe convergent evolution illustrated by these amphibians is quite striking. They look very much like earthworms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI fount this interesting as well. Really makes you think about things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this