These weird creatures were found in an abandoned foundation pit in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Looking like glass tulips, these tunicates are actually animals-early seafloor colonizers in areas of the Southern Ocean recently disturbed by iceberg scouring.

An image of the Oar fish. Its dragon-like appearance was probably responsible for some alleged sea monster sightings.

This weird rare pre-historic shark was found in Japan, particularly in Shizuoka, southwest of Tokyo. It looked like an eel. It was brought to a marine park’s seawater pool in Japan. However it died just hours thereafter.

Kiwa hirsuta is a crustacean discovered in 2005 in the South Pacific Ocean. This decapod, which is approximately 15 cm (6 inches) long, is notable for the quantity of silky blond setae (resembling fur) covering its pereiopods (thoracic legs, including claws). Its discoverers dubbed it the “yeti lobster” or “yeti crab.”

A weird creature was found washed up on a beach in New York.

This one weighed in at an incredible 646 pounds! Widely reported as the largest totally freshwater fish ever recorded.

An 11-year-old boy used a .50-calibre pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 476 kilograms and measured 2.74 metres from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.

The 44-inch, 60-pound female shortraker rockfish was caught last month by the catcher-processor Kodiak Enterprise as it trawled for pollock 2,100 feet below the surface, south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.

The 30-foot-long (10-meter) squid, snagged on a fishing line off Antarctica in 2007 (photo), carried some partially developed eggs. But when fully mature, he said, she would have had “many, many thousands of eggs” inside her mantle cavity, a chamber inside her tubular upper body.

Originally posted 2009-10-09 10:41:49.

Popularity: 80% [?]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A hatchling of a rare reptile with lineage dating back to the dinosaur age has been found in the wild on the New Zealand mainland for the first time in about 200 years, a wildlife official said Thursday.

The baby tuatara was discovered by staff during routine maintenance work at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in the capital, Wellington, conservation manager Raewyn Empson said.

“We are all absolutely thrilled with this discovery,” Empson said. “It means we have successfully re-established a breeding population back on the mainland, which is a massive breakthrough for New Zealand conservation.”
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Tuatara, which measure up to 32 inches (80 cm) when full grown, are the last descendants of a lizard-like reptile species that walked the Earth with the dinosaurs 225 million years ago, zoologists say.

There are estimated to be about 50,000 of them living in the wild on 32 small offshore islands cleared of predators, but this is the first time a hatchling has been seen on the mainland in about 200 years.

The New Zealand natives were nearly extinct on the country’s three main islands by the late 1700s due to the introduction of predators such as rats.

Empson said the hatchling is thought to be about one month old and likely came from an egg laid about 16 months ago. Two nests of eggs — the size of pingpong balls — were unearthed in the sanctuary last year and tuatara were expected to hatch around this time.

“He is unlikely to be the only baby to have hatched this season, but seeing him was an incredible fluke,” she said.

The youngster faces a tough journey to maturity despite being in the 620-acre (250 hectare) sanctuary and protected by a predator-proof fence. It will have to run from the cannibalistic adult tuatara, and would make a tasty snack for birds of prey, Empson said.

“Like all the wildlife living here, he’ll just have to take his chances,” Empson said.

“They’ve been extinct on the mainland for a long time,” said Lindsay Hazley, tuatara curator at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery on South Island. He added that “you can breed tuatara by eliminating risk, but to have results like this among many natural predators (like native birds) is a positive sign.”

About 200 tuatara have been released since 2005 into the Karori Sanctuary, which was established to breed native birds, insects and other creatures.

Tuatara have unique characteristics, such as two rows of top teeth closing over one row at the bottom and a parietal eye — a dot on the top of the skull that is believed to be light-sensitive and is sometimes referred to as the animal’s third eye.

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Originally posted 2009-03-28 08:12:23.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

The discoveries are being seen as fresh evidence of the richness of the world’s rainforests and the explorers hope their finds will add weight to calls for international action to prevent the demise of similar ecosystems. They said Papua New Guinea’s rainforest is currently being destroyed at the rate of 3.5% a year.

“It was mind-blowing to be there and it is clearly time we pulled our finger out and decided these habitats are worth us saving,” said Dr George McGavin who headed the expedition.

The team of biologists included experts from Oxford University, the London Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution and are believed to be the first scientists to enter the mountainous Bosavi crater. They were joined by members of the BBC Natural History Unit which filmed the expedition for a three-part documentary which starts tomorrow night.

They found the three-kilometre wide crater populated by spectacular birds of paradise and in the absence of big cats and monkeys, which are found in the remote jungles of the Amazon and Sumatra, the main predators are giant monitor lizards while kangaroos have evolved to live in trees. New species include a camouflaged gecko, a fanged frog and a fish called the Henamo grunter, named because it makes grunting noises from its swim bladder.

“These discoveries are really significant,” said Steve Backshall, a climber and naturalist who became so friendly with the never-before seen Bosavi silky cuscus, a marsupial that lives up trees and feeds on fruits and leaves, that it sat on his shoulder.

“The world is getting an awful lot smaller and it is getting very hard to find places that are so far off the beaten track.”

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Originally posted 2009-09-09 10:14:38.

Popularity: 2% [?]