NERS Review of the year Part 4 – New species

ByEd Yong
December 26, 2010
7 min read

This is the fourth in a series of posts reviewing last year’s stories, according to theme and topic. This one is about this year’s new species, both living and extinct.

8 ) T.rex the nose-loving tyrant leech king

7) Sanajeh, the snake the ate baby dinosaurs

6) The shark-toothed dinosaur with a ‘fin’ on its back (Pocket Science)

Dinosaur bodies are often covered in odd spikes, plates and sails, but a newly discovered species called Concavenator had a uniquely bizarre structure – a hump on its back, supported by two spikes coming out of its hips. Francisco Ortega, who discovered the 6-metre-long predator thinks that the hump was a deposit of fat but it could have been used for communication or keeping cool. Concavenator’s arms also have a row of small bumps that would have acted as attachment points for feathers or, at the very least, simple rigid filaments.

5) Pakasuchus – the crocodile that’s trying to be a mammal

4) Meet the squidworm: half-worm, half-squid… er, actually all-worm

The squidworm looks like a fusion animal, half-squid and half-worm. In fact, it’s all worm, a member of the group that includes familiar earthworms and leeches. It has ten long tentacles on its head – two for feeding and eight that probably help it to breathe or feel its way around. That such a bizarre (and slow-moving) animal has eluded discovery until now says a lot about the mysterious nature of the deep ocean.

3) Giant, fruit-eating monitor lizard discovered in the Philippines

A few years ago, a hunter in the Philippines brought a dead lizard to a biologist called Luke Welton, who realised that it was a new species. Varanus bitatawa, as it was named, is a monitor lizard and it’s very striking. It’s covered in intricate golden against a black back and it’s two metres long. Unlike almost all other monitors this one’s a vegetarian – it mostly eats fruits. And as is often the case, it may be new to science but the local tribespeople have known about it for centuries. They even eat it.

2) Behold Livyatan: the sperm whale that killed other whales

Around 12 million years ago, a monstrous predatory whale swam through the oceans around Peru. Livyatan was as large as a modern sperm whale, but far more formidable. Its mouth was full of huge teeth, the largest of which were a foot long, and its bite was probably the largest of any back-boned animal. It probably used these fearsome teeth to kill its own kind – the giant baleen whales. Somewhat embarrassingly, the animal had to be renamed after it turned out that its original moniker – Leviathan – has already been taken by a mammoth.

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1) Balaur the stocky dragon – Velociraptor’s double-clawed Romanian cousin

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