AsianScientist (Aug. 28, 2011) – Schools of a rare type of freshwater jellyfish the size of a human fingernail have been spotted in a river in south China’s Guangxi Province, reports the state-run Xinhua new agency.
The endangered freshwater jellyfish in a river were observed by a group of police officers conducting a dive-training session in June of this year. Wei Qinghua, a police diving coach who first noticed the jellyfish, found thousands of the creatures in an underwater cave and sent pictures to biologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
CAS biologists later identified them as peach blossom jellyfish for their resemblance to the flower.
The endangered creatures, nicknamed the “panda in the water,” are regarded as a living fossil in biology and has become extinct in other countries besides China.
As one of the lowest levels of life on Earth, freshwater jellyfish have been around for 1.5 billion years, and appeared millions of years earlier than the dinosaurs.
The invertebrate has very critical requirements for its living environment: it cannot tolerate any form of water pollution, and requires water temperatures below 35 degrees centigrade for survival.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine.
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