‘Top 10’ new species includes cartwheeling spider, 'chicken from hell’

Some 18,000 species, great and small, were discovered in 2014, adding to the 2 million already known, scientists said on Thursday, as they released a “Top 10” list that highlights the diversity of life. One of the top 10, dubbed “the chicken from hell,” is extinct. The feathered dinosaur whose partial skeletons were unearthed in the Dakotas was a contemporary of T. rex and Triceratops. Two species caught the list-makers’ attention for their performance art. A spider from the sand dunes of Morocco cartwheels to thwart predators, moving twice as fast as when it runs, while a pufferfish from Japan turns out to be the creator of intricate circles on the sea floor which had mystified scientists for 20 years.

We have only begun to explore the astonishing origin, history and diversity of life.

Quentin Wheeler, founding director of the IISE and president of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry

The list highlights biodiversity at a time when scientists estimate that species are going extinct far faster than humans can discover them. Even animals that science has named and classified can easily slip away. The northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), survives only in captivity; just five individuals are left on Earth. And the red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis) was thought extinct until biologists working in Colombia stumbled across one in 2011; the animal remains on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of the 100 most-threatened species on the planet.

Science new species