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A rare species of a type of threadsnake, measuring only 10 centimeters in length, was discovered recently in the Caribbean island of Barbados by Blair Hedges, evolutionary biologist at the Pennsylvania State University and researcher, also known for discovering the world's smallest species of frogs and lizards. ... |
4 August 2008
02:56 GMT |
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Here is a dwarf amongst living elephants: the pygmy elephant of Borneo is one meter (3 feet) shorter than its mainland Asian elephant counterparts and remarkably tame and passive. They also look different from other Asian elephants, being rounder and with longer tails, straighter tusks, a shorter trunk and bigger ear... |
29 April 2008
03:31 GMT |
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The Maldives Islands are made of 26 atolls, placed southwest of the island of Ceylon. The islands were lusted for by the Portuguese and Dutch, but also by the pirates of the Malabar Coast (western India). During the 17th century, the islanders put themselves under the protection of Ceylon, and later, in 1887, under t... |
14 April 2008
09:57 GMT |
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So far, scientists have known about some salamanders (of the family Plethodontidae) and caecilians (worm-like amphibians) that had lost their lungs. Now they can add a frog on the list of lungless tetrapod vertebrates: the Kalimantan jungle toad (Barbourula kalimantanensis). This amphibian takes all the oxygen it ne... |
8 April 2008
03:56 GMT |
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The Hawaii islands is the product of the volcanoes. The archipelago, located 4,000 km (2,500 mi) away from California, was unknown to the Europeans until the voyages of James Cook, who stepped on the islands in 1778 (later, he was killed by the natives, during a visit in the archipelago). Cook named Hawaii the Sandw... |
4 April 2008
11:13 GMT |
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The Bermuda Triangle turned famous because of the publicity made around the disappearance of sea and aerial ships recorded in an area of the Atlantic Ocean, the Sargasso Sea, located east of Florida's shore, including the archipelagos of Bermudas, Bahamas, and the islands of Haiti and Puerto Rico. Many believe t... |
3 April 2008
09:03 GMT |
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West of Sumatra, away from the main trade routes, Mentawai Islands seem ideal for maintaining a life style known in other places 10,000 years ago. The largest island of the group is Siberut, located at 10 hours of boat traveling from Sumatra. Siberut is 110 km (68 mi) long and 50 km (30 mi) wide. Until the beginning ... |
17 March 2008
17:26 GMT |
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Most of the populations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia and other parts of the southeastern Asia speak Malayan. These people originated in a migration of Mongoloid tribes coming from Taiwan. They first entered Philippines and, from there, colonized the whole Pacific and Indonesia... |
14 March 2008
18:16 GMT |
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You may have heard about Easter Island and its enigmatic huge stone heads. But there is also a Christmas Island. It belongs to Australia, but because of its remote location of the Australian mainland, many people in the motherland ignore it or simply do not know about its existence. Christmas Island is located in the... |
12 March 2008
10:37 GMT |
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The Cuna Indians inhabit the San Blas Archipelago, a group of 300 islets located off the Caribbean coast of Panama, on a length of 150 km (95 mi). Only the 50 largest islands are inhabited. The maximum height of the islands is of 200 m (666 ft) and they are covered by lush tropical forests. But, despite their beauty,... |
10 March 2008
12:33 GMT |
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1.The populations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and other parts of the southeastern Asia are called Malayan. These people originated in a migration of Mongoloid tribes coming from Taiwan. They first entered Philippines and from there colonized the whole Pacific and Indonesia. But before the Austronesian migrati... |
23 February 2008
02:56 GMT |
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1. Canary Islands are just the peak of mountain forming submarine volcanoes located in the mid-ridge of the Atlantic ocean. They emerged from the sea 20 million years ago. In some places, the lava is still hot and at 20 cm (8 in) underground, the earth has a temperature of 140o C. 2. The indigenous people of the Cana... |
29 January 2008
15:36 GMT |
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When Europeans heard about it for the first time, they thought it was a legend. But the existence of the huge lizard whose skin could not be penetrated by bullets was real. The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is the world largest living lizard: males can be up to 3 m (10 ft) long and weigh 150-200 kg (320-440 pou... |
29 January 2008
14:06 GMT |
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For the first Europeans navigating around Africa during the 15th century, these islands were vital. In those times, Africa was full of luxuries: gold, ivory, spices and slaves. These first explorers found on the middle of the east African shore a safe and deep port for their fragile boats. The port was protected by c... |
19 December 2007
09:31 GMT |
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Vanuatu (formerly called New Hebrides before gaining independence in 1980) is located in southwestern Pacific, half way between Australia and Fiji. The archipelago is made of 80 islands and has a "Y" shape. The islands appeared following the crash of tectonic plates, forming huge mountains that are mainly covered by ... |
12 December 2007
14:06 GMT |
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Any myth contains a grain of truth. This is also the case of Atlantis, the country swallowed by the sea. The myth of the Atlantis, first mentioned by Plato 2400 years ago, is about a real ancient civilization destroyed by the sea. The Atlantic Ocean got its name from Atlantis, as many subsequent civilizations placed ... |
10 December 2007
10:15 GMT |
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This is the whale of the ground-dwelling arhtropods (articulated-feet invertebrates). The coconut crab, also called the robber crab (because it is believed to steal shiny objects, like a magpie), lives only on the tropical islands of Indian and Pacific Oceans (Christmas, Seychelles, Cook, Andaman, Nicobar, Carolines)... |
19 November 2007
14:11 GMT |
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Krakatoa volcano, located on an island in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, produced on August 26-27, 1883 the most massive volcanic explosions ever recorded, which generated the loudest sound historically reported: it was distinctly heard as far away as Perth in Australia (1930 mi (3100 km)) an... |
13 November 2007
04:53 GMT |
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Traveling 100 years ago in the Vanuatu islands would have meant you were going to lose your head. And you body inside the stomachs of the locals, as they were still practicing cannibalism in certain areas. Now, over 50 headless skeletons have been discovered in one of the oldest cemeteries of the Pacific islands, bel... |
1 November 2007
07:13 GMT |
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Bali is a fiesta for the senses. There are kilometers of dreamlike beaches (with white sand in the south and black sand in the north and west) and crystalline waters, edging coral reefs, which contrast with the exuberant green of the picturesque terraces of paddy fields, in a equatorial island of just 5,632 km² (2,00... |
6 October 2007
05:40 GMT |
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The decline of the severe ice shelf coming with the global warming, a process that has been observed in the last years in Antarctica and Greenland, is more and more prominent in the North Pole area. In Aug. 13, 2005, the giant Ayles Ice Shelf, the size of Manhattan (16 x 5 km; 10 mi x 3 mi), has broken out free from ... |
5 October 2007
04:34 GMT |
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They are as mysterious as the European Atlantis: the submerged stones lying just below the waves splashing on the island of Yonaguni Jima could be the ruins of a Japanese Atlantis, an ancient unknown city sunk by a powerful earthquake about 2,000 years ago. Its main defender is Masaaki Kimura, a marine geologist at t... |
24 September 2007
04:40 GMT |
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Snails don't fly, nor can they swim in the sea (at least those connected to tree life), so that researchers were puzzled for over a century about how Tahitian tree snails (Partula hyalina) "jumped" from Tahiti to two relatively distant Polynesian islands, Austral and Southern Cook Islands. More puzzling was the ... |
20 September 2007
04:11 GMT |
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You know that sand comes in colors of yellow, white, or gray. Sometimes, if it's volcanic, also black. But what about a pink sand beach?As incredible as it may seem, they do exist. Harbour Island (Bahamas) is most renowned for its pale pink sand beaches, some over 3 miles (5 km) long and 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30... |
14 September 2007
14:06 GMT |
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These tiny people once spread horror among the visitors of their island. Besides their fearsome habit of cutting off heads, their origins, the carved stones inside the villages and the habit of hanging pig jaws on the girder of their houses are still mysteries. Their ancestors, called Nihas ("people") believed they d... |
4 September 2007
11:23 GMT |
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This volcanic spot in the middle of the Pacific, located 667 km (410 mi) away from the Chilean coast, is one of the few virgin regions left on Earth. The Juan Fernandez archipelago takes its name from its discoverer, who found it in 1574, while looking for winds to speed his voyage from Callao to Valparaiso. This sai... |
1 September 2007
09:06 GMT |
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Humans conquered the entire Globe, but to the poles, the climate is too harsh to sustain human populations. So, a question rises: till which latitude can humans live?Well, it appears that the northernmost inhabited land is not Greenland, but the Svalbard archipelago, located north off Norway. Svalbard is made of 5 bi... |
30 August 2007
15:06 GMT |
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In the neuralgic center of the Mediterranean, there's a small country of only 315 square km, independent since 1964, which maintains its own identity despite the massive affluence of tourists from all over Europe which arrive on its untamed and sunny beaches every season of every year. Its agricultural and fishi... |
11 August 2007
09:26 GMT |
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In the Equatorial Pacific, between 90 and 91o V, and 1o 29' S, 968 km (605 mi) off western South American shore, at the same level with the Ecuador, to which it belongs, there's the the volcanic archipelago of Galapagos. It is formed by 18 greater islands (the largest being Isabella, 4290 square km, followe... |
28 July 2007
06:51 GMT |
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Little house mice are not the cute pets they may seem. These ferocious beasts can kill seabirds 300 times their weight on an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Till now, house mice (Mus musculus) were believed to be harmless to island birds. Now, video footage depicts hoards of tiny house mice as they invade the nes... |
10 July 2007
03:35 GMT |
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This is an unusual case: scientists know that a species is extinct even if its last individual has not died yet. But it could still exist for 1-2 centuries more. This is the "Lonesome George", the last known survivor of a species of Pinta tortoise, one of the 13 species of giant tortoises (of which two are already ex... |
7 July 2007
06:13 GMT |
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Mystery is what some of us live for. I will not get psychological or philosophical on you, but curiosity is the most precious thing that humans have... the need that drives them to know more and automatically to learn more...Anyway, going back to our problem, for this week's game, the issue is still "mystery". W... |
22 June 2007
10:43 GMT |
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Jason Buelterman, Tybee Insland's Mayor, posted a clip on the famous online video sharing service YouTube in a desperate attempt to show the local beach erosion and get some help from the authorities. It seems that the mayor aimed to attract Georgia's Congressional Delegation because they represent the only... |
29 May 2007
09:37 GMT |
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The island of Isola is again in the centre of attention. Two of our little buddies from the previous Virtual Villagers game wondered off into the unknown through the mysterious cave on their side of the island. Turns out another group of people made their home further away. The rediscovering process starts all over a... |
20 April 2007
07:57 GMT |
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Swift. Silent. Invisible. An elite team of U.S. Army Green Berets, the Ghosts are tasked to eliminate the invaders, restore peace, and light the fire of liberty in the new island republic. Cuba, 2009: Castro is dead, and the first free elections in decades are thrown into turmoil by a drug-funded warlord. The Ghosts,... |
13 March 2007
03:38 GMT |
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