Sharp-toothed Boreonykus, a dog-sized dinosaur, found near Grande Prairie

A new species of dinosaur about the size of a dog and possessing a lethal claw has been discovered in northwestern Alberta by an Australian paleontologist.The remains of the Boreonykus was discovered at the Pipestone Creek bonebed — a huge gravesite of the plant-eating dinosaur Pachyrhinosaurus that dates back 73 million years. The site is about 20 kilometres southwest of Grande Prairie. 

The Boreonykus bones were found among thousands of bones from another dinosaur. =read more =http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/sharp-toothed-boreonykus-a-dog-sized-dinosaur-found-near-grande-prairie-1.3494699

New shark and ray species found in Indian waters

From the Indian waters, a unique and pleasant challenge has suddenly surfaced — 13 new species of sharks and rays. Researchers were bar coding sharks and rays found in the Indian waters when they came across these new species.

The researchers are busy naming them before adding to the list of sharks and rays found in the Indian waters. The results of 111 species of sharks and rays that were bar coded were published last month in the journal Mitochondrial DNA.

The DNA bar coding was successfully used for accurate identification of chondrichthyans which included the chimaeras, sharks, rays, and skates in the Indian waters, according to A. Gopalakrishnan, director, Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi, one of the leading partners in the project. The chondrichthyans are exploited in commercial, artisanal, and recreational fishing activities but the major catch occurs incommercial fishery. They are highly vulnerable to over exploitation and habitat degradation due to their life history.

With an estimated landing of 46,471 tonnes, India is one of the leading chondrichthyan fishing nations for the past several years. Despite the rich diversity and long history of the elasmobranch fishery, only a few detailed studies have been undertaken on the taxonomy and diversity of this group in India, pointed out the paper.

The Kochi unit of the Peninsular and Marine Fish Genetic Resources Centre and the National Research Collections Australia, Hobart, Tasmania and Australia partnered in the research project.

During the analysis, 528 specimens of 111 chondrichthyan species and 34 families, collected from the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone were bar coded, said K.K. Bineesh, the lead author of the paper.

With the bar coding, it has now become easy for the identification of the species from its tissues, be it salted or even dried samples.

Recently, the government had imposed a ban on the export of shark fins. Five species of sharks and two manta ray species found in Indian waters have been included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora for monitoring its international trade. The protected species have to be accurately identified in the field or at the export/trade levels to ensure their effective protection and prevention of illegal trade. “The documentation would help in strictly enforcing the conservation drive of the species,” Dr. Bineesh said.

Biologists have just created a new species of bacteria with just 437 genes

A team of scientists led by renowned biologist Craig Venter has made a breakthrough some 20 years in the making: they've managed to create a species of bacteria in the lab with a genetic code that's smaller than any found in nature. With just 437 genes, the lab-made organism is carrying the absolute known minimum amount of genetic code required to support life.

By creating this self-replicating bacterium, scientists from the Synthetic Genomics lab and the J. Craig Venter Institute hope to get a better understanding of the function of the individual genes that make up every living organism - while we're making new discoveries all the time, there's still a lot we don't know about these vital biological building blocks.

Of the catchily named JCVI-syn3.0 microbe's 437 genes, only 149 have a known function. In other words, we know the rest are necessary for life to exist, but we haven't figured out what their purpose is yet. To help scientists find out more, what Venter and his team are now learning from this experiment is being added to a public database so anyone can study them.=read more=http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-created-a-living-organism-with-the-smallest-genome-yet

First New Butterfly Species Found In Alaska In 28 Years May Be Ancient Hybrid, Researchers Claim

A new species of butterfly discovered in Alaska may be an ancient hybrid of animal, a new study suggests. This is the first species of the flying insect discovered in The Last Frontier in 28 years.

The Tanana Arctic, scientifically known as Oeneis tanana, may be the only species of butterfly to regularly make the frozen landscape of Alaska its home, according to investigators.

Biologists theorize the Tanana Arctic may have first taken to the skies sometime between 28,000 and 14,000 years before our own time. Two species, the White-veined Arctic butterfly and the Chryxus Arctic, may have mated to form the new variety of insect. If true, all three species may have flown together at the same time in the tail end of the last period of glaciation.

If it is confirmed that the newly-discovered species could be the result of cross-breeding between two species of butterflies, likely prior to the last ice age, this finding could help answer questions on ancient migrations about other species.

"Scientists who study plants and fish have suggested that unglaciated parts of ancient Alaska known as Beringia, including the strip of land that once connected Asia and what's now Alaska, served as a refuge where plants and animals waited out the last ice age and then moved eastward or southward from there. This is potentially a supporting piece of evidence for that," said Andrew Warren of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity =read more=http://www.techtimes.com/articles/142538/20160320/first-new-butterfly-species-found-in-alaska-in-28-years-may-be-ancient-hybrid-researchers-claim.htm

Why are new species of frog being discovered so often?

Ramit Singal was on a field survey for his citizen science initiative to protect the rocky laterite lands near the coastal town of Manipal in Karnataka when he spotted a thumbnail-sized frog with a call that sounded like a cricket's. Singal hadn’t seen a frog like it before and when he consulted other researchers, it turned out that they hadn't either. After studying the frog's genetics, body structure, colouration and vocalisation, Singal and his collaborators concluded that they had discovered a new frog species in the Western Ghats.

The frog, named Microhyla laterite after its habitat and described in a paper published in PLOS ONE on March 9, is just 1.6-cm long, pale brown with black markings, and is the latest in a long line of amphibian discoveries in India. A week earlier, another team of researchers discovered a species of bush frog in the Biligiri Rangaswamy mountain range, the southeastern offshoot of the Western ghats. In January, a team of biologists led by India’s most famous frog expert, Sathyabhama Das Biju, described a species of tree frog in Arunachal Pradesh that was =read more=http://scroll.in/article/805151/why-are-new-species-of-frog-being-discovered-so-often-because-there-are-so-many-of-them

New species of ant which builds maze-like nests found

A group of zoologists has found a new species of ant, which constructs nests like an elaborate maze having horizontal galleries, in the biodiversity-rich Western Ghats. 

Named Anochetus daedalus, the species was discovered recently in Karnataka by Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). 

The research work has been published in the latest issue of peer-reviewed Current Science journal. 

"While walking through community forests in Heggarane village in Sirsi, we stumbled upon a unique mud structure - an elaborate, labyrinthine, and maze like structure on a vertical fall on the forest trail. Curious to know what it could be, we excavated it and found a few =read more =http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/new-species-of-ant-which-builds-maze-like-nests-found-116032500392_1.html

Earliest evidence of humans in Ireland

A bear bone found in a cave may push back dates for the earliest human settlement of Ireland by 2,500 years.

The bone shows clear signs of cut marks with stone tools, and has been radiocarbon dated to 12,500 years ago.

This places humans in Ireland in the Palaeolithic era; previously, the earliest evidence of people came from the Mesolithic, after 10,000 years ago.

The brown bear bone had been stored in a cardboard box at the National Museum of Ireland for almost a century.

Since the 1970s, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Ireland has been the hunter-gatherer settlement of Mount Sandel on the banks of the River Bann, County Derry, which dates to 8,000 years ago.

Antiquarians and scientists have been searching for an Irish Palaeolithic since the second half of the 19th Century.

Over this 150-year period, occasional Palaeolithic tools have surfaced but in each case have been dismissed as objects originating from Britain that had simply been carried along by ice sheets or other geological processes.

During the Palaeolithic, Ireland was already an island, cut off from the rest of northwest Europe, so nomadic hunter-gatherer groups would have arrived by boat.=read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35863186

Two New Dung Beetle Species Found in Mexico

A Mexican-Italian research team discovered two new dung beetle species in Mexico while carrying out a biodiversity study in conserved forests and cattle-grazing sites. The new species are described in the journal ZooKeys.
As their name suggests, dung beetles are insects that feed mainly on mammal faeces. For decades, an international research team, led by Dr. Gonzalo Halffter, has studied dung beetles across the world, especially in Mexico. As a consequence, the Mexican species are some of the best-known. However, Dr. Halffter and his team are not interested exclusively in dung beetles, but also in the effects of land-use change, ecosystems modification by human activities, and conservation biology.
Raising livestock is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide, which makes the present discovery particularly impressive. A large amount of land is used for livestock farming in Mexico, so dung beetles are essential in cleaning up the environment.
The first to discover these new dung beetles was Victor Moctezuma, a student of Dr. Halffter’s at the Instituto de Ecología of Mexico.=read more =http://entomologytoday.org/2016/03/16/two-new-dung-beetle-species-found-in-mexico/

Mysterious new dwarf human species probed after scientists find 3 million year old skull in cave

Scientists have discovered a skull belonging to a previously unknown species of human from three million years ago.
The research team made up of paleoanthropologists stumbled across the remains in an underground cave and have now put together a skeleton which stands at 4ft 9 tall and is described as "a really, really strange creature."
Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and his co-horts stumbled across 15 individuals skeletons which they believe make up a tribe of the bizarre human species - and now they've found the missing link.
And while they resemble homo sapiens - like modern day humans - the species could more more than 2.8 million years old.=read more=http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mysterious-new-dwarf-human-species-7566527

New golden frog species found

Researchers have discovered a new species of pale-gold coloured frog in the cloud forests of the high Andes in Colombia.

Its name, Pristimantis dorado, commemorates both its colour (dorado means ‘golden’ in Spanish) and El Dorado, a mythical city of gold eagerly sought for centuries by Spanish conquistadores in South America.

“The Spaniards assumed Colombia’s wealth was its gold, but today we understand that the real riches of the country lie in its biodiversity,” said one of the researchers Andrew Crawford from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in panama.=read more=http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-in-school/new-golden-frog-species-found/article8371802.ece

Fishy origin of bizarre fossil 'monster'

Scientists say a worm-like fossil with mysterious origins is actually the ancestor of living fish.

The 300 million-year-old animal was found at an Illinois mine in 1958 by fossil collector Francis Tully.
The "Tully monster" has been a puzzle to scientists ever since, and has been likened to worms and molluscs.
US researchers say the fossil is a backboned animal rather than an invertebrate as once thought, based on an analysis of 1,000 museum specimens.
Their findings, published in Nature, place it firmly on the tree of life of vertebrates and related to fish such as lamprey and hagfish.
It has a rudimentary backbone, which has been misinterpreted in the past as a trace of gut, said Victoria McCoy of Yale University.
"The Tully Monster is very weird looking but we found it is related to modern lamprey," she told BBC News.
"It shows us how evolution can take something very familiar and make it very weird without changing what we know about the tree of life."

---

What are lampreys?read more=bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35821829

How extinct humans left their mark on us

Most people in the world share 2-4% of DNA with Neanderthals while a few inherited genes from Denisovans, a study confirms.

Denisovan DNA lives on only in Pacific island dwellers, while Neanderthal genes are more widespread, researchers report in the journal Science.
Meanwhile, some parts of our genetic code show little trace of our extinct cousins.
They include hundreds of genes involved in brain development and language.
"These are big, truly interesting regions," said co-researcher Dr Joshua Akey, an expert on human evolutionary genetics from the University of Washington Medicine, US.
"It will be a long, hard slog to fully understand the genetic differences between humans, Denisovans and Neanderthals in these regions and the traits they influence."

Siberia cave

Studies of nuclear DNA (the instructions to build a human) are particularly useful in the case of Denisovans, which are largely missing from the fossil record.
The prehistoric species was discovered less than a decade ago through genetic analysis of a finger bone unearthed in a cave in northern Siberia.=read more =bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35835126

ghostman: An exceptional fossil skull from South America and...

ghostman: An exceptional fossil skull from South America and...: Birds, dinosaurs, crocodilians, pterosaurs and their close relatives form the highly diverse clade Archosauriformes. Archosauriforms have a...

A NEW species of spider which can surf, swim and catch fish has been discovered in Queensland

A NEW species of spider which can surf, swim and catch fish has been discovered in Queensland.

Australian researchers have named it Dolomedes briangreenei, or Brian for short, in honour of physicist and World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene, who is professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk unveiled the spider to Professor Green in Brisbane yesterday at the festival’s inaugural opening.
“It’s wonderful that this beautiful native spider, which relies on waves for its very survival, has found a namesake in a man who is one of the world’s leading experts in exploring and explaining the effects of waves in our universe,” Ms Palaszczuk said.=read more=http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/surfing-spider-found-in-queensland-has-terrifying-set-of-skills/news-story/c444a395259efa5a7a904ca95d15c780

Frog species with yellow eyebrows found in Colombia

Researchers say they have discovered a new frog species with distinctive yellow eyebrows in Colombia.

The frog has a dark camouflage pattern which allows it to blend in with the rocky soil on which it dwells.
Researchers with the Humboldt Institute found the frog, which they named Pristimantis macrummendozai, in the Iguaquen Merchan moorlands, in central Boyaca province.
Colombia is one of the world's most biologically diverse countries.
Researchers said that the species was well adapted to its moorland surroundings.read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35763229

Fossil reptile discovery 'something extraordinary'

A newly discovered 250-million-year-old fossil reptile from Brazil gives an "extraordinary" insight into life just before the dinosaurs appeared.
At the time, the world was recovering from a massive extinction that wiped out most living species.
The reptile, named Teyujagua or "fierce lizard", is the close relative of a group that gave rise to dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds.
The fossil is "beautiful" and fills an evolutionary gap, say scientists.
Dr Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham said the animal is a new species that has not been previously known.
"It's very close to the ancestry of a very important group of reptiles called archosauriforms," the co-researcher on the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, told BBC News.
"It helps us understand how that group evolved."

'Beautiful skull'

Teyujagua paradoxa was a small crocodile-like animal that probably lived at the side of lakes, feeding on fish.=read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35783598

Meat eating accelerated face evolution

Eating raw meat and making stone tools may be behind the smaller teeth and faces of humans compared with their ancient relatives.

Meat and tools, not the advent of cooking, was the trigger that freed early humans to develop a smaller chewing apparatus, a study suggests.
This in turn may have allowed other changes, such as improved speech and even shifts in the size of the brain.
The authors conclude that cooking became commonplace much later.
Prof Daniel Lieberman and Dr Katherine Zink from Harvard University have published their work in the journal Nature.
The earliest members of our genus, Homo, are only sparsely represented in the fossil record.
By the time the species Homo erectus appeared about two million years ago, humans had evolved bigger brains and bodies that had increased our daily energy requirements.
But paradoxically, they had also evolved smaller teeth, as well as weaker chewing muscles and bite force. They also had a smaller gut than earlier human ancestors.

Something to chew on

One of the possible reasons for these changes, cooking, did not become commonplace until 500,000 years ago, the researchers found. This means that it probably did not play a significant role in the evolution of smaller chewing muscles and=read more on bbc link=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35766760

Europe's rarest seabird 'faces extinction'

Europe's rarest seabird will be extinct within 60 years, according to a new analysis.

Urgent action is needed to stop the Balearic sheerwater being drowned in fishing lines and nets, say scientists.
The bird breeds in the Balearic Islands, sometimes stopping off in British waters as it migrates north.
Research shows the global population is not sustainable in the long term. There are about 3,000 breeding pairs left.
The main threat to the bird is becoming entangled in fishing gear, according to findings published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Other risks include hunting by the likes of cats and other small mammals.
Prof Tim Guilford of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford is co-researcher on the study.
He told BBC News: "The survival of adults from one year to the next and especially of young adults is much lower than we thought.
"The species is unsustainable - it is on the road to extinction.=READ MORE ON BBC LINK=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35778655

Venezuela’s New-Found Species Already in Danger

CARACAS – A trio of new species – a fish, a frog and a plant – that were recently discovered in northern Venezuela are already in danger of extinction because the expansion of human activity is diminishing the water supply in their habitat.

The three species were identified in January by a team of researchers who traveled to the high valleys of the Carabobo Basin to study biodiversity after reports of widespread loss of forest in the region.

“We can say that possible new species were found,” biologist Arnaldo Ferrer, coordinator of the research team, told EFE.

“They are already endangered, if the level of (human) intervention in the area continues, they are in danger,” he said of the new species, which were found at an altitude of 1,300 meters (4,260 feet).

Scientists became alarmed when they noted the degree of deforestation, Ferrer said, warning that if illegal logging and land clearance continues, the forests will disappear within five years.

The devastation spreads even though the 276,000-hectare (681,500-acre) expanse is supposed to be a “protected area” under a 1978 executive order citing the Carabobo Basin’s importance as the main source of water for more than a million people.

“About 80 percent of the forest cover is disappearing, it could be some 50,000 hectares, and this has an impact on climate, an impact on overall environmental quality and on the production of water,” Andres Osorio, president of the Venezuelan-German Institute for Applied Environmental Sciences, told EFE.

The group received a $50,000 grant from the UN Development Program for efforts to restore the Carabobo Basin.

The good news is that roughly 30,000 hectares of the devastated forest areas can be restored.

“We must secure the source that replenishes the aquifers and the source that replenishes the aquifers is the forest,” Osorio said.

New snake species found in northern Western Ghats

A new species of snake has been identified from the northern Western Ghats by researchers. The snake, which is said to be the fourth species in the genus Melanophidium has been named after a city-based herpetologist. "We have been working on this for the past 15 years.

The snake has been named Melanophidium Khairei after Neelimkumar Khaire. Back then, Dr David Gower from the Natural History Museum in London realised that a specimen from Bombay Natural History Society, which was considered to be Melanophidium punctatum was actually different from the type specimen. Therefore, we started our work along with him," informed Dr Varad Giri, a researcher from Bangalore's National Centre for Biological Sciences. Other researchers who worked with them are Dr Mark Wilkinson from the Natural History Museum of London and Ashok Captain, a herpetologist from the city.

The new species named khairei is different from punctatum in terms of the scales on the tail and stomach and they differ even in their distribution. While punctatum is found in the south of Palghat Gap in Kerala, khairei is found in the northern Western Ghats in Radhagiri, Amboli and the surrounding areas of Maharashtra and Goa, among other places. "We have named him after Neelimkumar Khaire to honour his contribution in snake research and conservation," added Dr Giri.=READ MORE =http://www.punemirror.in/pune/others/New-snake-species-found-in-northern-Western-Ghats/articleshow/51261498.cms

New frog species found in Biligiri

A small hill station in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Tiger Reserve (BRTTR) now lends its name to a new species of bush frog that was discovered there by scientists recently.

The Honnametti bush frog (scientific name: Raorchestes honnametti ) was discovered by a team from Gubbi Labs and ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment) when they were called to the tiger reserve to look for the rare Sholiga narrow-mouthed frog.

The species discovered is a cryptic bush frog — that is, it resembles another species of Seshachar’s bush frog ( Raorchestes charius ). The discovery, says Priti H. from ATREE, would make it the first such cryptic species to be found in the Western Ghats, one that can lead us to understanding the evolutionary history of such species.

“It is very difficult to differentiate between the Honnametti bush frog and Seshachar’s bush frog (discovered first in Chikkamagaluru district in 1937). So, we integrated a classical approach in describing a species with the molecular and acoustic analysis in describing the new species,” said Gururaja K.V., Chief Scientist, Gubbi Labs, who is the lead author of a paper that describes the discovery.

DNA analysis and the call pattern of the bush frog eventually led to the clinching proof that it was indeed a hitherto unknown species.=READ MORE =http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/new-frog-species-found-in-biligiri/article8306748.ece

Scientists: Possible new octopus species found near Hawaii

HONOLULU (AP) — Scientists say they have discovered what might be a new species of octopus while searching the Pacific Ocean floor near the Hawaiian Islands.
On Feb. 27, a team found a small light-colored octopus at a depth of about 2.5 miles in the ocean near Necker Island, said Michael Vecchione of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The octopus did not have fins and all of its suckers were in one row on each arm, Vecchione said.
The octopus "did not seem very muscular" and was light colored, he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3477770/Scientist-Possible-new-octopus-species-near-Hawaii.html#ixzz422YPTTyz