THE ANIMALS
NEW SPECIES
Discovered in 1992 in Vu Quang, northern Vietnam, the Vu Quang ox, Pseudoryx nghetinhensis, is one of the most important new mammals to have been discovered for over 50 years. The size of a buffalo, it has long, slender legs and horns, and was previously only known from skins and skulls.
· The mysterious
holy goat of Vietnam
Even more recently discovered and more mysterious than the Vu Quang ox is the holy goat, Pseudonovibos spirals. It was first made known to science in 1994, when some strange spiraled horns were spotted a market at Ho Chi Minh City, southern Vietnam. Identical horns have since been obtained in Cambodia. Local people claim the holy goat resembles a cow, but no scientist has ever seen a specimen.
· British pipistrelles
are a unique strain
In may 1997, mammalogist Dr Gareth Jones of Bristol University, UK, announced that the pipistrelles in England did not all belong to the same species, as traditionally thought. Some belonged to a previously undetected, totally new species identical in outward appearance, but with readily distinguishable DNA, and emitting ultrasonic squeaks at a different frequency.
EXTINCT SPECIES
· Dinosaur colours stored
in chromatophore fossils
In Aug 1997, Australian biophysicist Dr Andrew Parker revealed that he had identified chromatophores preserved in several different fossil animals, including prehistoric crustaceans, worms, and fishes. It now seems likely that chromatophores will be located in dinosaur fossil too, finally revealing what colours these animals were.
· Gargantuavis was the
original non-flying bird
Until recently, no species of flightless bird larger than a turkey was known to have existed alongside the dinosaurs but, in Jan 1998, Paris University paleontologist Prof. Eric Buffetaut documented a newly unearthed fossil bird dating back 72 million years, which he aptly named Gargantuavis. This is because it is estimated to have weighed about 141 kg and was therefore too heavy to fly.
· Plans to replicate the
original world’s tallest bird
Up to 3 m tall, New Zealand’s flightless, ostrich like giant moa, Dinornis giganteus, was the world’s tallest bird before its extinction. Now, Biologists at Hirosaki University, Aomori, Japan, are seeking to resurrect this huge bird, by extracting DNA from bones, replicating it, and then injecting it into chicken embryos.
· Quagga is slowly being bred
again following extinction
The quagga, a yellowish brown zebra horse with stripes only on its head and neck, was hunted to extinction in southern Africa by the 1870s but, since 1987, a team f scientist in Cape Town, South Africa, have been re-breeding the extinct animal over successive generation of zebra. The scientists have managed to breed nine zebra with take many more generations before a true quagga is produced.
