Scientists say hello to several new species

With noisy, polluting aircraft taking off and landing day and night, an airport runway doesn't sound like an obvious place to discover a brand new species. Yet amazingly, a group of biologists has done just that, after finding a new type of legless lizard living in the shadow of Los Angeles International Airport. Named the Southern Californian legless lizard, it’s one of four new members of the Anniellidae family to be identified and detailed in a paper published earlier this week by Harvard University.

These lizards aren’t the only zoological discoveries of note in recent months. Earlier this week, a team led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen unveiled a new genus of spiny rat, found in the forests of Indonesia’s Maluku islands – the same island group where British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace once formulated his pioneering thoughts on the subject of evolution. It was from here that Wallace wrote to Charles Darwin in the mid-1800s, influencing the latter’s seminal study On the Origin of Species.

Also hitting the headlines this summer was the olinguito – a small mammal from the forest of Columbia and Ecuador formally introduced in August. Closely related to raccoons, the olinguito was the first new carnivore species to be found on the continent in 35 years. And back in June, a tiny bird first spotted in 2009 was also added to the list of new discoveries. Named the Cambodian tailorbird, it surprised experts by being found not in a remote wilderness but in the middle of the busy city of Phnom Penh. However, researchers fear that it does not live there by choice but rather as a consequence of habitat loss, and have warned that it could very quickly become endangered.