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Scientists: New amphibian family augurs more India discoveries
Scientists have found what they say is a new family of legless amphibians in Northeast India - animals they say may have diverged from similar vertebrates in Africa when the land masses separated tens of millions of years ago.
The find, the scientists say, might foreshadow other discoveries in Northeast India and might help show the area played a more important evolutionary role than previously thought.
The creatures are part of an order of limbless, soil-dwelling amphibians called caecilians - not to be confused with snakes, which are reptiles. Caecilians were previously known to consist of nine families in Asia, Africa and South America.
But different bone structures in the head distinguish this apparent 10th family, and DNA testing links the creatures not to other caecilians in India, but to caecilians that are exclusively from Africa, the scientists report this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.
The new family has been dubbed Chikilidae by the scientists from India, Belgium and the United Kingdom, including lead author Rachunliu Kamei, who was pursuing her doctorate at University of Delhi. The team found them during what it believes is the first caecilian survey in Northeast India, digging at 238 sites from 2006 to 2010.
“It’s an amazing thing to find a new family, especially vertebrates, in this day in age,” Global Wildlife Conservation president Don Church, who was not part of the team but knows Kamei and the team’s other scientists, told CNN on Thursday. “Birds, reptiles and amphibians really were thought to have been well worked out at the family level.”
The burrowing amphibians “exhibit an intriguing and highly specialized reproductive behavior,” the team’s leader, University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju, told The Times of India.
“The mother builds underground nests for her eggs, guards her egg-clutch by coiling around them until the embryos hatch after 2-3 months,” he told The Times of India. “The eggs undergo direct development - they feed on the yolk reserves and come out as miniature adults.”
Residents of the area had mistaken the amphibians for snakes, the Indian news outlet reported.
Chikilidae’s link to the African caecilians, and its divergence and survival in Northeast India during the subcontinent’s isolation before it joined with Asia, suggests the area had long-term ecological stability. That suggests it might have more life endemic to that region than is currently recognized, the scientists say in the report.
Scientists traditionally have viewed Northeast India as just a passageway where flora and fauna moved between biodiversity hotspots in Southeast Asia and a different part of India, Church said.
“Now, with a study like this, we realize that this part of the world is important not just for the movement of plants and animals between the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia, but an important area for evolution in its own right,” Church said.
“This discovery begs the question: What else has happened up there in terms of evolution of life in Northeast India?” he added.
Geographically distinct Northeast India has not been studied well, and many other undocumented creatures and flora may await there, according to the team. The region is almost cut off from the rest of India, nearly surrounded by Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.
Time, they say, is of the essence.
“Further explorations and conservation actions are urgent because the region’s biodiversity is generally under high threat from the growing resident human population and rapid deforestation,” the scientists say in their report.
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Reasons why this species is so rare is people often mistake these creatures for poisonous snakes and kill them on the spot while in fact they are non-poisonous.
In fact, they are non-poisonous non-snakes, but thanks for the eye-opening information.
Please, no filler cliches like "Time, they say, is of the essence."
"Brevity is the soul of wit."
New family, you'd think CNN would at least DESCRIBE it better. Size, length, habits, whether or not they bite, poisonous, edible, make good pets, what they feel like, how fast they move, how they move, where they could be found, etc. But that would be REAL journalism. Instead its important to just say how important of a find it was, and then preach about deforestation.
Oh noes! Feigned outrage!
If you ACTUALLY cared that much about accurate science reporting you would subscribe to an actual scientific journal for your source on new discoveries instead of popular media. I would be willing to bet however, that you don't.
I'd say you were being a pis_ant, but your name says it already.
Well... I must say... this is an important find. Yawn...
Just because you are too uneducated about biology to know how important it is doesn't mean everyone is that dumb.
Yeah, the impact on your life is going to be huge, tremendous, unfathomable, you dummy.
They look like worms to me.
Totally agree
Thanks to letting me know about this important discovery; too bad it seems to be over the heads of the mouth-breathers.
Duh they are called worms.. Hellllo!!!!
Worms have bones? Since when?
We believe it may also be closely related to newts and gingrichs.
Thank you for my morning laugh outloud!
Good one!
On behalf of my family and the whole amphibian class, I resent that!
Sal, everyone knows newts and efts are from a much lower class than salamanders.
OK, who's going to break it to them? They're earth worms.
Earthworms don't have bones.
If you're too stupid to understand science, please post your ignorant drivel somewhere else.
Most doctoral students (and they are students) need to make up some kinda of grand theory to justify the amount of time they have wasted thinking about stuff like this which is not important.
Put that thing on a hook and it will attract fish just like a worm.
"Put that thing on a hook and it will attract fish just like a worm" That's what SHE said.
Tank u for calling technical support, I HAVE WORMS
Do you have crickets and minnows too?
You need to see a doctor.
Let's see what they taste like.
You go first. If you don't turn blue, maybe the rest of us will -you know what? Just help yourself. The rest of us aren't hungry.
Bobby Jindal - another odd amphibian from India.
I like when the media makes up news for sensationalism.
"The find, the scientists say, might foreshadow other discoveries in Northeast India and might help show the area played a more important evolutionary role than previously thought."
In other words, this is the first find, but IF they find MORE, then it COULD show some importance.