Chad Arment posted the following story to his newsgroup, and I was so fascinated that I had to pass it on. It is originally from a blog dealing with echinoderms, called - impressively enough - echinoblog:
Back in 2003, I described an amazing new genus and species of deep-sea oreasterid starfish in the Bulletin of Marine Sciences called Astrosarkus idipi from the "sub-reef" region (known by some as the "Twilight Zone") in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans in about 67-200 meter depth. It was one of the most physically stunning starfish I had ever seen. Not only was it the color, but it had the texture, and SIZE of a pumpkin!
But here was a new GENUS and SPECIES that was easily one foot across (=0.3 meter) and about 4-5 inches (~0.1 m) THICK. It was ENORMOUS.
How had such a LARGE starfish evaded description for so long???
Read On...
No comments:
Post a Comment