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In places, it remains incredibly lifelike, with hair on its back and thick eyelashes. But it has also sustained damage. It lost its tusks and part of its trunk in the earthquakes, and more recently a possum was discovered nesting in its straw stuffing.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/Stuff
The elephant in the attic. The animal s skin was shipped from France to New Zealand in 1876. Those old enough may remember seeing the male Asian elephant on display alongside other large mammals. Due to a lack of space, it was relocated to the “mammal attic” in the mid-90s – where it cannot now be removed, because it s too big.
How were the Top 10 chosen?
An international committee of experts, chaired by Janine N. Caira of the University of Connecticut, selected the top 10 new species for this year s list. Nominations were invited through the species.asu.edu Web site and also generated by institute staff and committee members.
The Caira committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria, from unique attributes or surprising facts about the species to peculiar names.
This year s committee members included Philippe Bouchet, French National Museum of Natural History and International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature; Daphne G. Fautin, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas; Mary Liz Jameson, Wichita State University; Peter Kämpfer, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and Institut für Angewandte Mikrobiologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen; Niels Peder Kristensen, Zoologisk Museum, University o
Pythons Slithered Through Europe Before Coiling Around the World
The oldest known fossils of the predatory snakes were found at a German site, changing the snake family tree.
A fossil of a python found in Germany, coated in ammonium chloride to enhance visibility of structures.Credit.Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
By Katherine Kornei
Dec. 20, 2020
From 20-foot anacondas to species that can comfortably fit on a quarter, snakes slither across much of the world today. That’s in part because they’re remarkably good at adapting to new environments for instance, the Burmese python, native to Southeast Asia, is thriving in Florida’s Everglades National Park. Now, researchers have analyzed four fossilized python skeletons unearthed in Germany part of a region that’s currently free of the scaly creatures and rewritten the snake family trees.