Posted on 03/09/2006 2:46:21 PM PST by new yorker 77
It has the face of a rat and the tail of a skinny squirrel — and scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special: It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.
The long-whiskered rodent made international headlines last spring when biologists declared they'd discovered a brand new species, nicknamed the Laotian rock rat.
It turns out the little guy isn't new after all, but a rare kind of survivor: a member of a family until now known only from fossils.
Nor is it a rat. This species, called Diatomyidae, looks more like small squirrels or tree shrews, said paleontologist Mary Dawson of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Dawson, with colleagues in France and China, report the creature's new identity in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
The resemblance is "absolutely striking," Dawson said. As soon as her team spotted reports about the rodent's discovery, "we thought, 'My goodness, this is not a new family. We've known it from the fossil record.'"
They set out to prove that through meticulous comparisons between the bones of today's specimens and fossils found in China and elsewhere in Asia.
To reappear after 11 million years is more exciting than if the rodent really had been a new species, said George Schaller, a naturalist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which unveiled the creature's existence last year. Indeed, such reappearances are so rare that paleontologists dub them "the Lazarus effect."
"It shows you it's well worth looking around in this world, still, to see what's out there," Schaller said.
The nocturnal rodent lives in Laotian forests largely unexplored by outsiders, because of the geographic remoteness and history of political turmoil.
Schaller calls the area "an absolute wonderland," because biologists who have ventured in have found unique animals, like a type of wild ox called the saola, barking deer, and never-before-seen bats. Dawson describes it as a prehistoric zoo, teeming with information about past and present biodiversity.
All the attention to the ancient rodent will be "wonderful for conservation," Schaller said. "This way, Laos will be proud of that region for all these new animals, which will help conservation in that some of the forests, I hope, will be preserved."
Locals call the rodent kha-nyou. Scientists haven't yet a bagged a breathing one, only the bodies of those recently caught by hunters or for sale at meat markets, where researchers with the New York-based conservation society first spotted the creature.
Now the challenge is to trap some live ones, and calculate how many still exist to tell whether the species is endangered, Dawson said.
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There's a remote area of New Guinea which just recently was explored and discovered to have a *ton* of new (okay, make that "previously unknown to biologists") species of plants and animals. NG is already a treasure trove of unusual species, due to its long geographic isolation (like Madagascar and some other spots), but the species in this "new" area are apparently even isolated from the surrounding areas in NG, so they're doubly exotic. A friend of mine who's a nature buff was planning on going to NG in a few months anyway, and he's trying to wrangle permission to go bumming around in the newly discovered area, which is being nicknamed "The Lost World". Here's a news article about it.
Scientists don't really know whether it changed (adapted) during it's existence on Earth, or not.
According to their records, these rats are older than man, so what the hell would we know about it?
Scientists don't really know whether it changed (adapted) during it's existence on Earth, or not.
According to their records, these rats are older than man, so what the hell would we know about it?
We have folks who study such things. They are called scientists.
To answer that I suspect you'll have to go to Laos and get your hands dirty with some, you know, real-live scientific-type work. :-)
Turn your back on anything long enough and it will go extinct; at least until the next spring cleaning session.
OK, just how does a land based animal reappear after 4,015,000,000 days without being seen by someone?Yeah, apparently the local hunters knew they existed for some time. IIRC the same thing apparently happened WRT the coelacanth - after it was rediscovered off the coast of Africa, someone else discovered that it had been available in fish markets on the eastern side of the Indian Ocean.I imagine they were seen by "someone", he just didn't happen to be a biologist who realized what he was seeing.
Locals call the rodent kha-nyou. Scientists haven't yet a bagged a breathing one, only the bodies of those recently caught by hunters or for sale at meat markets, where researchers with the New York-based conservation society first spotted the creature.
With the possible exception of Dataman, I can't think of anyone who's learned less on these threads here despite a bombardment of attempted corrections.
Want me to nominate a few from this very thread? Or would that be anti-FreepSpeak?
Thanks for the compliment. At least I'm in good company.
Those were bombardment of attempted corrections? I always thought y'all were bombarding with evolutionary product of a cross between a bulldog and a Shih Tzu.
Thread's not evolving. However it is when you look at it, that's how it's always been.
It looks like a varmit to me.
"So, while bashing evolutionists for what they do, you also have to bash those who invented and run the dating tools we use.
Please share what dating tools you use to prove that various little critters are millions of years old? or is it billions?
FYI, DId you know that when a fossil is found in a stratum to which it "theoretically" does not belong, evolutionists use several means of explaining this discrepancy. For example, if it is supposed to be older than the containing bed, it can be said to have been redeposited from an earlier eroded deposit or to indicate the survival of its particular species longer than had been previously believed.
If it is supposed to be younger than its stratum, it can be explained as due to the reworking and mixing of 2 originally distinct deposits or else as showing that the animal dates from earlier antiquity than previously thought. OFTEN, discovery of such an anomalous fossil has been deemed sufficient justification for redating the entire formation to conform to the SUPPOSED age of the particular fossil.
The dates are constantly being changed Ichneumon - perhaps you should do some scholarly research. Your the one that needs a better education.
Try reading "Geological Correlation and Paleoecology" by Robin Allen. He is an evolutionist who admits "the findings of historical geology are suspect because the principles upon which they are based are inadequate"
There's tons of information on the sad state of the evolutionary time scale but you prefer to remain ignorant.
The geologic time series is built up by a hypothetical superposition of beds upon each other from all over the world. So despote fossils having been found grossly out of place in the "time scale, many creatures supposedly primitive have persisted to the present day, including many which somehow skipped all the way from very early period to the present without leaving any traces in intervening periods.
Uniform geology is a joke
I have'nt even touched on all the examples of "old" formations found resting confortably on "young"formations.
Honest geologists admit the "accepted" geologic time scale is an extremely fragile foundation
And don't get all excited because I said buds, OK.
Or maybe it's just a flashback?
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