The Good Morning Breakfast
A secretive tree 'raccoon', a ghostly shrimp and a bug that thrives in spacecraft assembly rooms: Meet the weird and wonderful new creatures only just discovered by science─── 14:05 Thu, 22 May 2014
From ghostly looking shrimps to tree-dwelling racoons, they are the weird and wonderful creatures that make up this year's top ten newly discovered species.
The list, which includes a microbe found in spaceship clean rooms, was chosen by a committee of experts from around 18,000 new species named in the past year.
Heading the list this year is the Olinguito, a secretive creature from the cloud forests of Columbia and Ecuador - the first new carnivorous mammal described by scientists in the western hemisphere in 35 years.
Native to rainforests and rocky habitats, this Leaf-tailed Gecko is a night owl found on the vertical surfaces of rocks and trees as it waits for prey. The creature was discovered on rocky terrain in isolated rain forests of the Melville Range of northeastern Australia. It's Latin name is Eximius; from the Latin meaning exceptional, extraordinary, exquisite
The list, which includes a microbe found in spaceship clean rooms, was chosen by a committee of experts from around 18,000 new species named in the past year.
Heading the list this year is the Olinguito, a secretive creature from the cloud forests of Columbia and Ecuador - the first new carnivorous mammal described by scientists in the western hemisphere in 35 years.
A previously undiscovered olinguito at Tandayapa Bird Lodge, Ecuador. The secretive tree-living carnivore from the cloud forests of the Andes is the first new carnivorous mammal described in the western hemisphere in 35 years. The photo was issued by SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
This ghostly new species of Skeleton Shrimp was identified from among specimens originally collected from a cave on Santa Catalina, off the coast of Southern California. Part of a marine family known as skeleton shrimp, the new species has an eerie, translucent appearance that makes it resemble a bony structure. The male's body measures just 3.3 millimeters while the female is even smaller at 2.1mm - less than a tenth of an inch
The Domed Land Snail lives in complete darkness some 900 meters below the surface in the Lukina Jama-Trojama caves of western Croatia. The land snail lacks eyes as they are not necessary in the total darkness of the caves, and it has no shell pigmentation giving it a ghost-like appearance. Only one living specimen was collected in a large cavern among rocks and sand with a small stream of running water nearby. The snail, measuring 2mm only moves a few millimeters or centimeters a week and may hitchhike longer distances on other cave animals such as bats or crickets
The Kaweesak's Dragon Tree stands 12 meters (nearly 40 feet) tall and features soft, sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream-colored flowers with bright orange filaments. It was found in the limestone mountains of the Loei and Lop Buri Provinces in Thailand and may also be found in nearby Burma. There are thought to be just 2,500 left and the species has been given a preliminary conservation status of endangered
- Dailymail
