10 Bizarre Recently Discovered Animal Species - Listverse

10 Bizarre Recently Discovered Animal Species - Listverse

Animals Modern human beings have lived on Earth for about 200,000 years. In that time, we've been almost everywhere-on land, in the sea, and on (and under) the water. You'd think we'd pretty much seen it all. However, that's not the case. Whether we're talking reptiles, dinosaurs, sharks, fish, flies, arthropods, or worms, nature is full of surprises.

Scientists solve mystery of the Tully Monster

Scientists solve mystery of the Tully Monster

Posted March 17, 2016 09:27:42 For more than half a century, scientists have scratched their heads over the nature of an outlandishly bizarre creature dubbed the Tully Monster. But researchers today announced they had finally solved the mystery of the creature, which flourished about 307 million years ago in a coastal estuary in what is now north-eastern Illinois.

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals

Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land. In two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H.

Deep-sea fish found to be warm-blooded

The opah, Lampris guttatus.(NOAA Fisheries, South West Fisheries Science Centre: Ralph Pace.)

Dani Cooper
ABC

Calling someone a cold fish may not hold any more after scientists today revealed a deep-sea fish that is warm-blooded.

While it was previously known that the opah (Lampris guttatus) could heat its eyes and brain, a paper published today in Science shows it can also heat its entire body. This makes the opah the only known fish species to be whole-body endothermic, or warm-blooded.

Dr Nick Wegner, who co-authored the study, says this trait gives the opah distinct advantages as a deep-sea predator.

"It will increase its performance in cold environments - it can swim faster, has faster reaction times and better visual resolution than a lot of its prey," says Wegner, a fisheries research biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service in California.

The opah Lampris guttatus has a global range that includes the southern waters of Australia and swims at depths between 10 and 450 metres.

It has a disc-like shape with large side or pectoral fins that can extend out by up to 25 centimetres and the fish can grow up to two metres and weigh 30 kilograms.

Wegner says the discovery was an "opportunistic find" after his friend and co-author Owyn Snodgrass sent him a sample of opah gills.

He recognised the presence of blood vessels that "weren't supposed to be there" and describes the unique configuration he noted as a "counter-current heat exchange".

Wegner says the fish initially produces heat through the flapping of its large pectoral fins, which warms up the body core.

As the warm blood leaves the core and travels toward the surface of the gills, it transfers its heat to the cold blood that is travelling back from the gills where it has absorbed oxygen from the water.
Wegner likens the system to a car radiator and says the exchange stops the heat from nearing the gill surface where it would be cooled by the water flow through the gills.

Further fatty tissue surrounds the gills, heart and muscle tissue where the opah generates much of its internal heat, insulating them from the frigid water.

The researchers found the opah was able to maintain body warmth of about 5 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding water temperature.

"The fish aren't warming up to the same degree as animals and birds," says Wegner. "If the opah was swimming in waters at 10 degrees Celsius than its body temperature would be about 15 degrees Celsius."

To record the body temperature of the fish the research team measured temperatures of fish that had been caught and also attached temperature tags to wild fish that could measure both the water temperature and body core temperature.

Interesting find
Museum of Victoria senior curator of Ichthyology Dr Martin Gomon says it is an interesting find and suggests it is likely the southern moonfish which is another species of Lampris would have the same feature.

Like the opah, Gomon says, the southern moonfish is known to be very active despite living in cold, deep waters.

"They are very, very similar externally so my guess is they would be very similar internally as well."

"Opah belongs to a group of fishes that are oceanic so they have had a longer evolutionary history to develop this system," Gomon says.

He says there are a number of different marine groups that have "gone down this evolutionary path" including some species of tuna and the Lamnidae family of sharks which includes the Great White.

But Gomon says these fish are only regionally endothermic - they can only warm parts of their bodies, such as muscles to enhance swimming performance, and the trait is temporary.

"The opah has a system where more of the body is kept warm and a high body temperature makes its entire physiological system more efficient," he says.

"It is a more efficient predator and has the ability to go into deeper water."

Wegner says he thinks the Lampris may be unique, but adds "if you asked me a few years ago if there was a fish that could warm its entire body I would have said no".

"The discovery just shows how little we know," he says.

Pentecopterus decorahensis: Ancient Giant Sea Scorpion Unearthed in Iowa

This is an artist’s rendering of Pentecopterus decorahensis. Image credit: Patrick Lynch / Yale University

The fossil of a previously unknown species of eurypterid that lived 460 million years ago (Middle Ordovician period) has been discovered in Iowa.


The creature, Pentecopterus decorahensis, is the oldest known species of eurypterid (sea scorpion) – a group of aquatic arthropods that are ancestors of modern spiders, lobsters, and ticks. The discovery published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology was made by paleontologists from Yale University and the University of Iowa.

“This shows that eurypterids evolved some 10 million years earlier than we thought, and the relationship of the new animal to other eurypterids shows that they must have been very diverse during this early time of their evolution, even though they are very rare in the fossil record,” said lead author Dr James Lamsdell of Yale University.

Dr Lamsdell and co-authors named the ancient monster after the ‘penteconter’ – an ancient Greek warship that the species resembles in outline and parallels in its predatory behavior.

“Pentecopterus decorahensis is large and predatory, and eurypterids must have been important predators in early Palaeozoic ecosystems,” Dr Lamsdell said.

The creature had a long head shield, a narrow body, and large, grasping limbs for trapping prey.
“Pentecopterus decorahensis is incredibly bizarre. The shape of the paddle – the leg which it would use to swim – is unique, as is the shape of the head. It’s also big – over 6 feet (1.5 m) long,” Dr Lamsdell added.

“Perhaps most surprising is the fantastic way it is preserved – the exoskeleton is compressed on the rock but can be peeled off and studied under a microscope.”

“This shows an amazing amount of detail, such as the patterns of small hairs on the legs.”
“At times it seems like you are studying the shed skin of a modern animal – an incredibly exciting opportunity for any paleontologist.”
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James C. Lamsdell et al. 2015. The oldest described eurypterid: a giant Middle Ordovician (Darriwilian) megalograptid from the Winneshiek Lagerstätte of Iowa. BMC Evolutionary Biology 15: 169; doi: 10.1186/s12862-015-0443-9

Fossil of biggest-known flying seabird found

The bird's wings were twice as long as the biggest modern-day seabird, the royal albatross, say scientists (Source: Liz Bradford)

AFP

Fossilised bird bones uncovered in the US represent the largest flying bird in history, with a wingspan of 6.4 metres, say researchers.

Their findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show the bird's wings were twice as long as the biggest modern-day seabird, the royal albatross.

Coupled with its long beak and sharp bony teeth, Pelagornis sandersi's enormous wings likely helped the bird master long periods of gliding over water in search of seafood some 25 to 28 million years ago.

However, the bird might have needed some help getting airborne, given that its wings were simply too long to flap easily from the ground.

Scientists believe it may have made a running start downhill, or used air gusts - much like a hang glider - to make its way aloft.

Once in the air, the bird could probably soar for miles without ever flapping its wings, says study author Dan Ksepka of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.
"That's important in the ocean, where food is patchy," he says.

P. sandersi lived after the dinosaurs became extinct but before the first humans are known to have inhabited North America.

Excavation

The bird's wing and leg bones along with its complete skull were first discovered in 1983 near Charleston, South Carolina, during excavation work for a new international airport.

"The upper wing bone alone was longer than my arm," says Ksepka, recalling that a backhoe was called in to help unearth the bones.

The bone measurements suggest that the bird's wingspan was between 6.06 and 7.38 metres, according to the researchers.

The previous size record holder was an extinct, 6-million-year-old bird found in Argentina, named Argentavis magnificens. Its wingspan was estimated at about 6.4 metres.

The fossils of the P. sandersi shed light on the flying ability of a remarkable bird, but also raise new questions about the group of bony toothed seabirds known as pelagornithids, which disappeared some 2.5 million years ago.

These ancient birds were "remarkably efficient fliers" that were found across all seven continents, making "the cause of their ultimate extinction all of the more mysterious," say Ksepka and colleauges.

Fossil fish re-defines origins of walking

Color illustration of Tiktaalik swimming and walking in water. (Source: Kalliopi Monoyios/University of Chicago)

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News

Fossils of a creature that looked part-fish and part-limbed animal, the precursor to walking land animals, were recently found in northern Canada, according to a new study.

The beastie, Tiktaalik roseae, represents the best-known transitional species between fish and land-dwelling animals, according to researchers.

The fossil, described in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lived 375 million years ago.

"Tiktaalik was a combination of primitive and advanced features," says co-author Edward Daeschler, Associate Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

While classified as a fish, Tiktaalik looked like a cross between a fish and a crocodile. It could grow to nearly 3 metres in length, and likely spent its days hunting in shallow freshwater environments. It had gills, scales and fins, but also had features associated with terrestrial animals. These included a mobile neck, a robust ribcage and primitive lungs.

Of most interest to the researchers, its large forefins had shoulders, elbows and partial wrists, which allowed it to support itself on ground.

The presence of these limb-like features challenges the theory that such mobile hind appendages developed only after species transitioned to life on land.

"Previous theories, based on the best available data, propose that a shift occurred from 'front-wheel drive' locomotion in fish to more of a 'four-wheel drive' in tetrapods (four-footed animals)," says co-author Neil Shubin, who is a professor of Anatomy at the University of Chicago. "But it looks like this shift actually began to happen in fish, not in limbed animals."

Some modern fish can walk, such as the African lungfish. Lungfish often look like they are slithering, more than walking, but if you see them in an aquarium, their little limbs are evident, and they do walk around.

It's likely that Tiktaalik did the same, with its later relatives walking completely out of water and onto land, where they eventually evolved into land animals.

"Regardless of the gait Tiktaalik used, it's clear that the emphasis on hind appendages and pelvic-propelled locomotion is a trend that began in fish, and was later exaggerated during the origin of tetrapods," Shubin says.

Faerie Hounds

Celtic fairy hounds (Roger Garland)

Huge faerie dogs haunt the roads of much of Mythic Europe. They terrify, and sometimes kill, travelers. Some can run rapidly, while others run upon their hindlimbs when chasing humans, so as to have their teeth closer to the victim's throat.

They say that a certain crossroads are a door to another world, the world of the faeries and the gods and demons that act in ways that we don’t usually see. Every now and then, these crossroads will have a peculiar occupant—the faerie dog. These aren’t the puppies you and I know—these dogs are bright green and will bark once or twice as a warning. But upon the third bark, the listener is doomed. Perhaps throwing a bone might help?

Aufhocker: Found in German-speaking areas, this creature acts as a kelpie, and uses its adhere power to cling to foes while goring them so that its weight adds 6 to their combat Load. 

Kludie: From Belgium, this is the most-powerful variant of this beast. It can take monstrously large versions of the forms of dog, cat, bat, horse, or frog. It walks on its back legs, with a dancing movement as it sprints toward its victim. It is preceded by supernatural blue flames. Kludie knows the trick of bouncing on the back of his quarry and using the adhere power to drag his prey down. It also does the kelpie trick, dunking or drowning those who mount him in horse form.

Genny

Using direction from an eyewitness, B. M. Nunnelly was able to create this sketch of Genny. (B. M. Nunnelly)

On a sunny morning in the late 1980s, two teenaged boys approached the muddy backwaters of the swollen Ohio River in Henderson County, Kentucky, armed with a .22 caliber pistol. The boys, Andy and Mike, planned to take turns shooting turtles off logs, and soon found targets aplenty. Mike's father, who had driven them to the isolated spot, remained in his car but was close enough to hear the shots from the handgun. 

The shooting stopped, however, when Andy saw something bob up from the river only a few yards away: a green hump, like an auto tire, covered in moss with dark green circles the size of baseballs spaced about a foot apart. Both boys watched in amazement as another hump surfaced close to the first one, and then another, until five humps sat there like a string of tires tied together. The humps were segmented and their surface resembled the skin of a lizard. 

The greatest shock, however, came when a head rose from the water in front of the humps. The boys could clearly see its elongated snout and dark, black eyes. As the head swung in their direction the creature appeared startled and sank quickly, humps and all, beneath the surface. 

This account was adapted from Mysterious Kentucky, with permission of the author, B. M. Nunnelly, who interviewed Andy some years after the incident occurred; Nunnelly found that the memory was still fresh in Andy's mind. Andy added that the creature (later named Genny, for the Geneva area in which it was sighted) was approximately 30 feet long and as big around as an automobile tire. It did not have scales. Andy also noted that a dark line ran along the creature's length, and that when the beast disappeared from view, it sank swiftly all at once rather than plunging forward in a diving motion. The creature swam with a side-to-side movement (unlike most serpent sightings which are usually described as up-and-down motions) that created a powerful wake. Andy also told Nunnelly that both he and Mike were too stunned to even think of firing at the creature, which appeared large enough to have made the boys its dinner if it had cared to. Andy was able to direct Nunnelly, a skilled artist, to create the drawing that accompanies this story. 

To this day, says Nunnelly, Mike is still too unnerved by the incident to talk about it. But Nunnelly has uncovered other eyewitnesses in the Geneva area. In 2001 James Kennedy was spending his Fourth of July holiday camping in the Sloughs Wildlife Management Area only two miles from Mike and Andy's encounter. To his surprise, he was able to watch a large, unknown "snakelike" creature swim as close as three or four feet from shore for several hours. The animal was no behemoth, measuring only about three feet long, but it had a beak shaped like a duck's and swam with its head above the surface of the water. Kennedy told Nunnelly he was close enough to be sure that it was not a snake, and regretted that he had failed to bring his net along to try to capture it. It's tempting to speculate that this was an offspring of the larger creature seen by the two teenagers almost 20 years earlier. Or perhaps there is more than one type of unknown aquatic inhabiting the area around Geneva, Kentucky. 

Nunnelly has also witnessed a few strange things in the waters of that state. One incident occurred about 20 miles from the two spots mentioned above, when he was able to view a humped, duckbilled, snakelike creature that he estimated at somewhere between the size of the two previously sighted creatures. This sighting was also made in the Ohio River, near Stanley in Davies County. His wife also saw it, and the couple was able to observe it for 30 minutes as it swam and repeatedly dipped from sight in the same, swift sinking motion noticed by Andy and Mike. In the mid-'90s, as he drove across a bridge over the Ohio, Nunnelly saw the neck and head of an unknown aquatic creature. It rose about five feet from the water, and reminded him of pictures he had seen of that famous Scottish lake monster, nessie of Loch Ness.

The Yale

Yale Latin name: Eale Other names: Centicore A beast with flexible horns that it can move at will

General Attributes

The yale has very long and flexible horns, which it move independantly in any direction. When it fights, it keeps one horn pointed backward, so that if the horn it is fighting with is damaged it can bring the other to the front. The yale is the size of a horse, but has the tail of an elephant and the jaws of a boar, and is black. The basilisk is the enemy of the yale, and if it finds the yale asleep it stings it between the eyes, causing its eyes to swell until they burst.

Sources (chronological order)

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 8, 30): The yale is found in Ethiopia. It is a black or tawny color, and has the tail of an elephant and the jaws of a boar. Its horns are more than a cubit in length and are moveable; in a fight the horns are used alternately, pointed forward or sloped backward, as needed.

THE KATOBLEPS (or Catoblepas)

THE KATOBLEPS (or Catoblepas) was a large bull-shaped animal of Aithiopia (sub-Saharan Africa) whose downward hanging face, when lifted, could kill by gaze or through the fumes of its noxious breath.

The Katobleps may have been derived from an embellished traveller's account of the African gnu.

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Aelian, On Animals 7. 6 (trans. Scholfield) (Greek natural history C2nd A.D.) :
"Libya [i.e. Africa] is the parent of a great number and a great variety of wild animals, and moreover it seems that the same country produces the animal called the Katobleps (Catoblepas, the Down-Looking). In appearance it is about he size of a bull, but it has a more grim expression, for its eyebrows are high and shaggy, and they eyes beneath are not large like those of oxen but narrower and bloodshot. And they do not look straight ahead but down on to the ground: that is why it is called ‘down-looking’. And a mane that begins on the crown of its head and resembles horsehair, falls over its forehead covering its face, which makes it more terrifying when one meets it. And it feeds upon poisonous roots. When it glares like a bull it immediately shudders and raises its mane, and when this has risen erect and the lips about its mouth are bared, it emits from its throat pungent and foul-smelling breath, so that the whole air overhead is infected, and any animals that approach and inhale it are grievously afflicted, lose their voice, and are seized with fatal convulsions. This beast is conscious of its power; and other animals know it too and flee from it as far away as they can."

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8. 77 (trans. Rackham) (Roman encyclopedia C1st A.D.) :
"In Western Aethiopia (Ethiopia [i.e. West Africa] there is a spring, the Nigris, which most people have supposed to be the source of the Nile . . . In its neighbourhood there is an animal called the Catoblepas, in other respects of moderate size and inactive with the rest of its limbs, only with a very heavy head which it carries with difficulty--it is always hanging down to the ground; otherwise it is deadly to the human race, as all who see its eyes expire immediately."

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Sources:

• Aelian, On Animals - Greek Natural History C2nd - C3rd A.D.
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History - Latin Natural History C1st A,D,

Other references not currently quoted here: Athenaeus 5.221b & 9.409c