Scientists tested the tissue of 235 dolphins, examined the craniums of 180 others and determined the dolphins were a new species. They say humpback dolphins are divided into four different species, including the newly discovered species.

According to Wildlife Conservation Society director Howard Rosenbaum, the discovery will help create conservation policy tailored to specific species.

Humpback dolphins are considered “threatened” in some waters and “vulnerable” in other parts of the world.

Some species may be threatened by fishing in coastal waters, while others are more vulnerable to invasion of their habitats, Howard Rosenbaum (director of the society’s Ocean Giants program) and Martin Mendez (assistant director of the society’s Latin America and the Caribbean program) said.

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Via: WashingtonPost

Three of the new species come in a wide array of colors: The purple-bellied A. grinnelli; the silver-bellied A. alexanderae, and A. campi, which has two dark stripes with a broad yellow stripe on its side. Another yellow-bellied species, A. stebbinsi, looks identical to A. pulchra and was found under leaf litter in protected dunes near Los Angeles International Airport. The four species were named after well-known scientists from University of California, Berkeley.

A. grinnelli

A. grinnelli

A. campi

A. alexanderae

“You come through this area and see heavy development and you don’t think, ‘there are new species here.’ You think that about the Amazon rain forest,” said James Parham, of California State University in Fullerton. “But here you can show there is a purple bellied lizard that had been separated from other lizards by millions of years in the city limits of Bakersfield. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s real.”

These legless lizards are mysterious creatures, according to Parham and he says that this research has really brought these creatures into the public eye.

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Image: Tao Thien Nguyen.

“I was asked by a curator to identify [the new species] and temporarily identified it as Tylototriton vietnamensis (the Vietnamese crocodile newt). However, the morphology was different from the original description of the Vietnamese crocodile newt,” said Kanto Nishikawa with Kyoto University. “Because I have never seen the Vietnamese crocodile newt I could not confirm the specimens in Tokyo are undescribed species. In 2012, I had a chance to visit Vietnam and discussed [the specimen] with co-author, Tao Thien Nguyen, and made a conclusion on its taxonomic status, as new species.”

The scientists named the new species Ziegler’s crocodile newt (Tylototriton ziegleri) after Thomas Ziegler of Cologne Zoo who works with reptiles and amphibians in Vietnam.

Image: Tao Thien Nguyen.

Ziegler’s crocodile newt is currently only known from only a small habitat of montane forest and wetlands.

“Currently, habitat loss and degradation, especially around the breeding ponds, is a major threat to the populations of the new species,” the researchers write in the paper. “Legal protection of their habitats and regulation of excessive commercial collection are important measures for conservation of this species.”

Crocodile newts are popular in the illegal pet trade and are often over-collected from the wild. There are now ten known species, eight of which have been evaluated by the IUCN Red List. Of these eight, three are threatened with extinction, four are listed as Near Threatened, and only one is Least Concern.

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Via: Mongabay

So “It’s not a sequel, expansion, or that rumored next-gen MMO, but it’s something we’re excited for you to get your hands on.”  Intriguing. Rumors say that may be Blizzard’s “indefinite hold” game - Starcraft: Ghost. However, there is a detail on the image.

The event will be hold in Naga Theater and that’s a cinema hall.

Can this new thing be a Warcraft movie?

Stay tuned for more.

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Via: 2P