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Top 10 Species Discovered in 2020 Include a Harry Potter Snake and Desert-Dwelling Broccoli

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While homo sapiens Refugees in Place, 2020 also saw explorers plunge into the world’s wild wilderness, encountering astonishing new species never before seen by science.

Some slide, some slide. There are monkeys, snakes, spiders, frogs, plants, and even the longest animal ever recorded.

They were found on all continents; from Madagascar to Bolivia, from India to Namibia, from Iran to Australia and from North Carolina to Heathrow Airport.

There are many reasons to feel that 2020 deserves to be remembered with a shutter, but the colors and characters of these newcomers to science textbooks it will give you something nice to remember the year.

Reptiles

A viper named after a Harry Potter character and a girl with kaleidoscope scales.

Trimeresurus salazar, copyright Zeeshan A. Mirza, National Center for Biological Sciences

In recent years, the Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh in northern India has been home to many newly discovered creatures. More recently it is a new viper named Trimeresurus salazar, what Harry Potter fans would immediately notice stands for: Salazar’s Viper.

The snake got its name from the fictional founder of Slytherin’s Hogwarts House, whose crest is an emerald green snake. The pit viper certainly looks good, although the males of this nocturnal species have a unique reddish-orange stripe on the side of their head.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam’s Ha Giang province, an underground specialist was discovered that glows iridescently in the sunlight. Achalinus zugorum It is presumed that it spends most of its life underground thanks to the lack of bright light photoreceptors in its eyes, making it incredibly difficult to find.

Its scales glow like the spectrum of Australian opals, and it is believed to be older than most snakes, which excites herpetologists that it may shed light on earlier stages of snake evolution.

Primates

A gross mouse and a critically endangered langur

Pop langur, copyright Thaung Win

In Myanmar, four populations of Stern trachypithecus were discovered. The Popa langur species is believed to contain only 260 individuals, which qualifies it as critically endangered. However sad it may be, a known problem has a solution, and the long, sparse gray fur and charismatic faces of these animals will have no problem generating interest in conservation.

Discoveries in the primate order are not common, and while habitat loss is concerning, charismatic species such as the Popa langur can often be used effectively to protect the habitat of other species that are also in danger. .

In Madagascar, the Darwinian playing field of evolution produced a species of mouse lemur that had eluded us until 2020. Microcebus jonahi, or Jonah’s mouse lemur, he is larger than others in his family. Averaging the size of a human fist, the smallest mouse lemurs can be as small as the palm of a hand.

With a reddish-brown fur with a white stripe on its nose, Jonah’s mouse lemur is believed to live only in the dry lowland forests of the Mananara Nord National Park of northeastern Madagascar.

Plants and fungi

Heathrow airport mushrooms and desert-dwelling Africans … broccoli?

Tiganophyton karasense, copyright Wessel Swanepoel

In the deserts of southern Namibia, Tiganophyton karasense, an evergreen shrub in the same order as broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale.brassicales, he was found to be unique enough to be his own family Tiganophytaceae.

It thrives where other plants die, in salt flats, under 96 ° F heat, and fewer than 1,000 individuals are known to exist.

Meanwhile, in a much colder climate, six new fungi were identified, one of which was designated as Cortinarius heatherae, after Heathrow Airport, where it was discovered alongside a nearby river beyond the runway limits.

CHECK OUT: New species, devil-eyed frogs and satyr butterflies not seen in a century found in forests 30 miles from the capital

Three others were found in Scotland, all belonging to the family. Cortinarius, which facilitates the growth and health of pines and oaks in the forest. They are cobweb fungi, which means that the underside of their caps looks like fish gills.

Arachnids

Scary and fascinating in equal parts, the Joaquin Phoenix spider and a very, very large scorpion.

Loureedia phoenixi, copyright Niloofar Sheikh / Zamani et. until 2020

While many vacationers won’t want to hear that a four-inch-long scorpion was discovered in Sri Lanka’s most visited protected area, a four-inch long scorpion was discovered in Sri Lanka’s most visited protected area.

Fortunately, as the old adage goes, Heterometrus yaleensis, or the giant Yala scorpion, named after the Yala National Park, it doesn’t have much sting, the big ones almost never do.

In Iran, a genre named after Lou Reed (velvet spiders have a new member), this one is named after Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the famous Batman nemesis in the 2019 production.

PLUS: Howling with joy: After 45 years, the gray wolf has been successfully removed from the US endangered species list.

Combining the celebrities in Physiology of the phoenix, It has a terrifying red spot on its thorax and black legs with white bands. It is the first of its kind to be found outside the Mediterranean, and while it looks terrifying, it is only eight millimeters long and displays quite charming behavior, such as building communal nests and transporting young of other spiders.

The ocean

How could we miss the longest animal on Earth and a species of whale?

Coiled Siphonophore, Schmidt Ocean Institute

100 miles north of Mexico’s San Benito Islands, a research team believes there may be found a new species of beaked whale. Originally thinking it was Perrin’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon perrini), a species that, although never seen alive, known and presumed to be in danger of extinction, the researchers changed their minds after closer observations.

In 2020, what is believed to be the largest animal, and certainly the longest ever recorded, was found in the abyssal canyons of the deep sea near Ningaloo. 30 new species were also first described by the dive it found a 150-foot-long (47-meter) giant siphonophore of the genus Apolemic.

Coiled like a rope the creature looks more like a jellyfish than a worm, and is actually a colonial organism made up of specialized polyps and smaller medusoids, collectively known as zooids, that act like humans inside a submarine, each zooid managing a different physiological function, such as propulsion or gastric function.

RELATED: Conservation success for the European bison is ‘living proof’ that ambitious biodiversity targets work

The world is a strange place, full of strange animals, and for children who believe there is nothing left to discover, a new monkey and the longest animal on Earth were discovered last year. Who knows what else is out there?

SHARE great discoveries with your friends on social media …



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