[HN Gopher] Fossil species found living off southern California;... ___________________________________________________________________ Fossil species found living off southern California; notes on the genus Cymatioa Author : bookofjoe Score : 19 points Date : 2022-11-09 21:26 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (zookeys.pensoft.net) (TXT) w3m dump (zookeys.pensoft.net) | bmitc wrote: | Do I have this right: a mollusk previously known only from fossil | records (and thus extinct) has been found as a living (and thus | extant) species? | | Is this common (or more common than you'd think) for insects and | mollusks and other such animals? | MichaelCollins wrote: | I feel like I've seen stories about this sort of thing | happening a few times at least; almost invariably the newly | [re]discovered animal is very similar to another species that | was already known to be alive, so while still a significant | discovery it lacks some punch. In this case the presumed- | extinct animal is quite similar to C. electilis, which was | known to be around in the modern era but apparently is poorly | documented (the article says living specimens of C. electilis | are undocumented so they could only compare the shells.) These | are the only two known living members of the genus and both are | rare, so it seems like a fairly significant discovery to me. | Not really a case of "animals previously thought to be one | species are now reclassified as two", like many other species | discoveries seem to be. | | I think situations like the Coelacanth, where the rediscovered | animal is unlike any other already known to be alive, are quite | rare. Although even in that case, the Coelacanth was a | revelation to science but probably not the fishermen that | caught it. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | They just found a cockroach in Australia that had been thought | to be extinct. | | So, maybe more common than you'd think? Definitely not common, | though - these findings are news for a reason. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-09 23:00 UTC)