Tags: Borneo, extinct species, gray monkey, grizzly langurs
Scientists working in the dense jungles of Indonesia have “rediscovered” a large, gray monkey so rare it was believed by many to be extinct.
They were all the more baffled to find the Miller’s Grizzled Langur — its black face framed by a fluffy, Dracula-esque white collar — in an area well outside its previously recorded home range.
The team set up camera traps in the Wehea Forest on the eastern tip of Borneo island in June, hoping to captures images of clouded leopards, orangutans and other wildlife known to congregate at several mineral salt licks.
The pictures that came back caught them all by surprise: groups of monkeys none had ever seen.
With virtually no photographs of the grizzled langurs in existence, it at first was a challenge to confirm their suspicions, said Brent Loken, a Ph.D. student at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and one of the lead researchers.
The only images out there were museum sketches.
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Climate change and human activity caused the extinction of some Ice-Age animals, such as the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, and wild horses, and the near extinction of others including reindeer, bison, and musk ox, says an international study.
Even after centuries of effort, some 86 percent of Earth’s species have yet to be fully described, according to new study that predicts our planet is home to 8.7 million species.
A giant marine reptile was likely ready for her baby shower about 78 million years ago when she died. The fossilized pregnant plesiosaur was carrying a large fetus when she was unearthed in Kentucky, the first expectant plesiosaur mom to be found since the species was discovered almost 200 years ago.
A month-long record-breaking heatwave has sparked nearly 50 fires in the Moscow region and the capital is sweltering under a thick layer of smog.
Doomsday scenario goes something like this: If global temperatures keep rising, some methane hydrates will melt, sending methane gas bubbling up through the ocean and into the atmosphere. Like any good greenhouse gas, the methane will trap heat close to Earth’s surface, causing temperatures to climb even higher. Hotter temperatures will melt more hydrates, and on and on. In other words, methane hydrates could trigger the mother of all feedback loops. The story, says David Archer, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, “has a great apocalyptic side to it.”
The current rate of extinction is 100 to 1000 times higher than the average, or background rate, making our current period the 6th major mass extinction in the planet’s history.
Charter boat captain Erik Rue, 42, photographed the animal, which is actually an albino, when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA.
Since 1939, scientists have thought the “barreleye” fish Macropinna microstoma had “tunnel vision” due to eye that were fixed in place. Now though, Monterey Bay Aquarium researchers show that the fish actually has a transparent head and the eyes rotate around inside of it. From the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
WHITTLESEA, Australia – Suspicions that the worst wildfires ever to strike Australia were deliberately set led police to declare crime scenes Monday in towns incinerated by blazes, while investigators moving into the charred landscape discovered more bodies. The death toll stood at 130.
