Around the world there are hundreds more mammals unknown to us.

Scientists from Ohio State University said that most of these unknown creatures have a small

body.These could be, for example, bats, rodents and shrews. Due to their size, researchers are not always able to distinguish morphological differences between them. It is possible that some species were combined into one from a taxonomic point of view.

Small, barely noticeable differences in appearanceit's harder to tell when you're looking at a tiny 10g animal. You can't tell they're different species unless you do a genetic analysis.

Brian Carstens, professor of evolution, ecology, and biology of organisms at The Ohio State University

A team led by an Ohio State graduate studentDanielle Parsons used supercomputing and machine learning techniques to analyze millions of publicly available gene sequences from 4,310 mammalian species. The scientists also examined data on where the animals live, their habitat, life history and other relevant information.

As a result, they built a predictive model to identify mammalian taxa that are likely to contain cryptic species.

Based on our analysis, it is conservatively estimated that there are hundreds of species of mammals in the world that have yet to be identified.

Brian Carstens, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University

The discovery in itself would not be a surprise to biologists, he said. Researchers estimate that only 1 to 10% of species on Earth have been formally described by researchers. 

Read more

The “fifth element” exists: a new experiment will confirm that information is material

Found the remains of political refugees from the Middle Ages: they were considered victims of the plague

Marine fungus recycles plastic in two weeks