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- Recent discoveries of an amazing variety
of animals and other organisms challenge the popular notion that scientists
have identified all the major life forms on the planet.
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- That was one conclusion of a group of
450 scientists from around the world who met today at the Missouri Botanical
Garden.
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- Their symposium, on "Our Unknown
Planet," highlighted several recent discoveries. The findings ranged
from new fish in the Amazon River to bacteria in Yellowstone National Park
that can't live in water less than 194 degrees Fahrenheit because "it's
too cold," as one researcher put it.
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- "The idea that we already know everything
is a myth," said Barbara Ertter, a scientist at the University of
California at Berkeley. "Even in our own backyard we are still finding
dramatically new species."
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- Ertter said the rate at which scientists
are discovering new kinds of plants in North America has remained unchanged
over the past two decades. That rate is about 60 plants a year.
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- "There's still stuff out there,"
she said.
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- Consider these other examples of discoveries
worldwide in the past few years:
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- A kind of mushroom that grows under the
ice of lakes high in the mountains of Argentina.
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- Several kinds of monkeys that dwell in
tropical forests on several continents.
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- A new species of electric fish in the
Amazon River, a giant prehistoric fish in Indonesia and another kind of
large fish in the Amazon. The latter discovery is "sort of like finding
a new tuna fish," said John Lundberg of the University of Arizona.
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- Among the more other-worldly new findings
are the "extremophiles," bacteria so named because they thrive
in extreme conditions.
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- Some prefer the cold of Antarctic ice,
while some grow best in the boiling water of the hot springs at Yellowstone.
Others prefer lakes more alkaline than the soapy water in a household washing
machine.
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- "What we know now is only the tip
of the iceberg," said Michael Madigan of Southern Illinois University
at Carbondale.
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- Such reports "make us stand back
in awe of the living things that make this world work," said Peter
Raven, director of the botanical garden. "One of the most exciting
things about our field is what we don't know."
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- In contrast, 30 to 40 years ago some
scientists thought the exploration of the world was complete, he said.
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- Over the past two centuries or more,
researchers have found and named more than a million organisms. Several
million more have yet to be discovered.
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- The challenge is to find them before
they become extinct in an ongoing wave of global environmental destruction,
Raven and others said.
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- Examples of newly found U.S. plant species
abound. In 1992 scientists discovered the Shasta snow-wreath, a relative
of a shrub that grows in Appalachia. The new species was growing along
a highway in northern California.
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- That same year another group of plant-hunters
in Alabama found six kinds of flowers new to science growing on a limestone
glade along a river.
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- The West and Southeast are hot spots
for discovering new plants, Ertter said. That's largely because they still
have vast unexplored areas and many types of habitats that are difficult
to reach. But some recently discovered plants have been found on the outskirts
of cities.
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- Three new kinds of plants have been found
in Missouri over the past two decades and four new kinds in Illinois.
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- In all, an estimated 1,800 plants remain
to be discovered in North America, Ertter said.
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- "That means roughly 5 percent of
our national flora - part of our national heritage - has not yet been found
and described," she said.
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- Michael Donoghue of Harvard University
said the close of the 20th century finds scientists "on the verge
of a new age of discovery of biological diversity."
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- "The next few decades, if we spend
them wisely, will yield insights into diversity that may have a more profound
impact on our understanding of life than any previous period in history,"
he said.
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