rediscovered in Peru: Sira barbet and Peruvian solitaire
News

Two lost birds rediscovered in Peru: Sira barbet and Peruvian solitaire

The Search for Lost Birds project has set itself the task of tracking down “lost” bird species that have not been documented in the wild for more than a decade. These species—without recent genetic or photographic evidence and without ex situ populations—are often considered lost to science. According to a

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Regenfrosch Atelopus longirostris - 2015 wiederentdeckt
News

Pristimantis ruidus: Frog Species Missing for 100 Years Rediscovered in Ecuador

During a 2022 expedition to the Molleturo forest in the Ecuadorian Andes, biologist Juan Sánchez-Nivicela and his team made a remarkable discovery: two tiny frogs that could not be immediately identified. Now, as the researchers report in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution, the frogs belong to the species Pristimantis ruidus,

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Neu entdeckte Tiere 2023: Krokodilsmolch Tylototriton ngoclinhensis
News

Newly discovered animals 2023

It is said that between 11,000 and 58,000 animal and plant species irreversibly go extinct each year, but there is also good news: around 18,000 new species are described and named by taxonomists each year; this number includes extinct or fossilized organisms, as well as bacteria and viruses. Even in

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Insects

Darwin’s Rove Beetle

A chance find gave it its own name On August 24, 1832, the HMS Beagle anchored in Bahía Blanca Province in eastern Argentina. On board the ship: the then 23-year-old British naturalist Charles Darwin. During the voyage he collected rock samples, plants, marine animals and a great many beetles. He

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subantarktischer schluepfer
News

New bird species discovered on treeless archipelago

About 100 kilometers south of Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America, lie the one-square-kilometer Diego Ramírez Islands. They are home to the Subantarctic rayadito (Aphrastura subantarctica), which until recently was thought to be the thorn-tailed rayadito (Aphrastura spinicauda), a species widespread in Chile and adjacent regions. A clue

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Schwimmkäfer
Insects

Brazilian diving beetle

“Giant of the Dytiscidae” Until recently, the Brazilian diving beetle Megadytes ducalis was known only from a single male specimen, which, according to rumors, was discovered before 1882 at the bottom of a water-filled canoe in the Amazon region of Brazil. It is currently housed at the Natural History Museum

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Falklandwolf Burmeister-Fuchs
Mammals

Argentinean Warrah

How the Argentinean warrah became the Falkland Islands wolf During the last ice age, around 16,000 years ago, a few Argentinean warrahs used shallow, frozen parts of the sea to travel from South America to the Falkland Islands, 500 kilometers away. Over time, the Argentinean warrah on the Falkland Islands

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Falklandwolf (Dusicyon australis) im Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden
Mammals

Falkland Islands wolf

How did the Falkland Islands wolf reach the Falkland Islands? As early as 1690, British visitors to the Falkland Islands wondered about the only land mammal living there among all the small creatures. There were not even mice there. What did this wolf feed on? The British naturalist Charles Darwin,

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galapagos-reisratte / verwandte der darwin-reisratte
Mammals

Darwin’s Galápagos Mouse

The name darwini seems appropriate The first rodent native to the Galápagos Islands was collected by the naturalist Charles Darwin on San Cristóbal in 1835: Mus galapagoensis. Seven further species of endemic rodents were subsequently discovered on four other islands of the Galápagos Archipelago. At least four of these species

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