Evolution: finding new species (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 04, 2021, 18:18 (1175 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by David Turell, Thursday, February 04, 2021, 18:53

a constant event as we search nature and in the fossil beds. Now a new baleen whale who has always been here:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2266074-a-new-species-of-baleen-whale-has-been-fou...

A small group of whales living in the Gulf of Mexico belong to a new species that has remained undetected for millennia. There are fewer than 100 of them, so they are immediately an endangered species.

The new species belongs to a group called baleen whales, which filter food out of the water and include the largest whale of all, the blue whale. Despite their size, we still haven’t been able to track down how many species of baleen whale there are.

Comment: 99% are gone, but we keep finding new ones like the fossil fish coelacanth many years ago. Here's another:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-tiny-chameleon-species-may-be-world-smallest-re...

Hidden beneath the leaf litter of a northern Malagasy forest lives a chameleon so slight that it could tumble off the tip of your finger. Measuring just under 30 millimeters from snout to tail, the newly described species, Brookesia nana, may be the smallest reptile on Earth, researchers report January 28 in Scientific Reports.

Just two adult specimens, a male and female, are known. The female measures 28.9 millimeters, considerably larger than the 21.6-millimeter-long male. The size difference may have driven the male’s genitalia to be quite large — nearly 20 percent of its body length — to be a better fit to his mate, herpetologist Frank Glaw of the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich and colleagues suggest.

Dubbed B. nana for its nano size, the species belongs to a genus of at least 13 other small chameleons spread out across the mountainous forests of northern Madagascar. Why B. nana and its cousins shrank to such minuscule proportions remains a mystery, though smallness does have its benefits: There’s some evidence that small chameleons are especially good shots with their ballistic tongues.

In daylight, Brookesia chameleons scour the forest floor, snatching up mites and other small invertebrates, Glaw’s team suspects. At night, the lizards retreat upward, gripping blades of grass or other plants for safety.

Deforestation and habitat degradation threaten B. nana’s future, the researchers say, though the region where the compact chameleons were found was recently designated a protected area by the Malagasy government. The species may soon be listed as critically endangered, the gravest rating made by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Comment: Found and endangered all at once. We know species come and go. One obvious attribute of the evolution process is increasing complexity from the beginning, as I've previously noted, but a drive to extreme diversification is obvious. Why? My thought is that God's new various designs guarantee life will survive all sorts of adverse events.