BackBird-like dinosaur, birthing frog among 2015’s top 10 new species
They were shortlisted at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry on the basis of their unusual characteristics
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New Delhi: An international committee of taxonomists selected the top 10 species among approximately 18,000 species named last year which include a cartwheeling spider, a nine-inch stick insect and a feathered dinosaur.
The top 10 species are shortlisted by the International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) on the basis of their unusual characteristics.
“The last vast unexplored frontier on Earth is the biosphere. We have only begun to explore the astonishing origin, history, and diversity of life," said Quentin Wheeler, ESF president and founding director of the IISE in a press release. To highlight the importance of finding new species, SUNY College has said that scientists believe 10 million species await discovery, five times the number that are already known to science.
Anzu wyliei, which has a mixture of bird and dinosaur features, is from a bird-like group of dinosaurs that lived in North America and three well-preserved partial skeletons were discovered in North and South Dakota, in the Hell Creek Formation. It was nicknamed ‘chicken from hell’ by the scientists.
A sand-coloured spider named Cebrennus rechenbergi, found in Morocco, cartwheels away from danger at twice its running speed. Deuteragenia ossariu or the Bone-house Wasp, found in eastern China, uses dead ants to protect its nest. But it is not the only one with unusual parenting techniques. A frog found in Indonesia was found to give birth to its tadpoles, instead of laying eggs that hatch later into tadpoles.
Among sea inhabitants is a sea slug in Japan that helped scientists find the connection between hydroid-feeding sea slugs and coral-feeding sea slugs. There was also the Pufferfish which turned out to be the key to the 20-year-old mystery of crop circles found on the seafloor off the coast of Amami-Ōshima Island in Japan.
An undiscovered species existing in plain sight of local inhabitants was Tillandsia religiosa, a plant that makes appearances in the Christmas decorations in Mexico. But the plant with its rose-coloured spikes and flat green leaves was new to scientists.
Also on the list were Balanophora coralliformis, a coral parasitic plant with unusual tubers, discovered in the Philippines and considered endangered. The final one in the list was an animal resembling a mushroom that might not come under the category of any new species and may possibly belong to an entirely new phylum. This would be the eighth list that the institute has released since the first one in 2008.
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