FOXSYLVANIA

— It’s getting increasingly hard to find anywhere in the world where the foot of man has not trod, and erected a Starbucks…but even in today’s world, explorers are still able to find a few undiscovered places and new species along with it!

One such place is Papua, New Guinea where scientists in a remote mountainous region (pictured) have discovered more than 50 new animal species that include spiders, tree frogs, and a striped gecko that appear to have never been described in scientific literature before.  One of the spiders is shiny and pale green, and there’s a bug-eyed bright green tree frog.  Frogs are often regarded as a great bioindicator of environmental health, with declines in frogs pointing to an affected or changing environment.

My favorite discovery, however, was described as being a giant but friendly vegetarian rat, who may turn out to be the largest in the world.   A tree-dwelling marsupial was found that looks like a bear, and also discovered  was a frog with fangs (should be perfect for the upcoming Halloween)!   

This entry was posted on September 7, 2009 at 12:16 pm and is filed under animals, cool things, environmental, rare animal, science. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: New Guinea, New species