AsianScientist (Jun. 29, 2011) – Scientists have found more than 1,000 previously unknown species in New Guinea over a 10 year span between 1998 to 2008, according to The Final Frontier: Newly Discovered species of New Guinea (1998 – 2008) report from the World Wildlife Fund that was released this week.
While the majority of the discovered species listed are plants and insects, the inventory includes 134 amphibians, 71 fish, 43 reptiles, 12 mammals, and 2 birds. Among the notable finds are a pink dolphin, a turquoise and black monitor lizard, and an eight-foot river shark.
New Guinea is the largest tropical island on Earth, and it is divided between the countries of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the East and Indonesia in the West. It contains the third largest tract of rainforest in the world after the Amazon and the Congo.
This mysterious island covers less than 0.5 percent of the Earth’s landmass but shelters 6 to 8 percent of the world’s species. Over two thirds of these species are found nowhere else on earth. New Guinea though could lose half its forest to logging by 2020, and already some of these newly found species are so rare that they went onto the endangered list as soon as they were discovered.
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Source: WWF.
Copyright: AsianScientist Magazine.
