NEW ANIMALS!

May 23, 2006 5:30 PM

Help me find or compile a list of recently discovered animals in reverse chronological order!

I get insanely stoked when I read about new animals, like Kiwa hirsuta, the yeti lobster! I want to find or compile a listing of other recently discovered animals so I can get even more stoked!! What are some good starting points?

posted by beerbajay to science & nature (4 answers total)

Tough request, really. A lot this is kept track of by taxonomic grouping, not at a meta level. Best starting points or places to search/browse I can think of are Species2000 and the Tree of Life.

Also, this list contains some dates and might be searchable, and also has good links.
posted by Rumple at 6:01 PM on May 23, 2006

The Fortean Times tends to announce 'big news' type new species. Unfortunately, issues have become pricey in the last few years, although you can now get collections on CD-ROM.
posted by kimota at 6:21 PM on May 23, 2006

Perhaps the most recently announced new species, Cebus queirozi, was discovered in northeastern Brazil. Professor Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes, was quoted about the special moment:

"As soon as I saw the monkey with its golden-yellow hair and the white tiara on its head, I knew it was a new species," Pontes said.

Is this the primate/drag queen hybrid the President warned us about?
posted by rob511 at 11:43 PM on May 23, 2006

unfortunatelly, it's likely to be impossible to get an accurate list in reverse chronological order, since new species are described every day. species 2000 and TOL are valuable resources but take a while to be updated (one of the professors at my institution runs species2000 and recieves 1000's of emails a week in regard to it)

the best thing would be to do a search for taxanomic journals. these are often where new species are first described (with justification as to why they are said to be "new"), most new species are considered too insignificant to get a mention in popular news sources so it's likely they are never heard of by the general public.

one good journal worth looking at would be zootaxa. They have a "featured paper" section that highlights important discoveries.
posted by tnai at 3:34 AM on May 24, 2006