“Beneath the cloud hidden deep in the mountain, scientists have discovered a lost world”: an ancient forest in a Chinese sinkhole, which is a “haven for rare plants.”
“In southern China, scientists have discovered ancient forests with animals and plants they thought were extinct in several sinkholes. The sinkholes have formed over tens of thousands of years and have only recently become visible when the land collapsed. They’re now being explored with the help of local mountaineers,” reports the BBC.
“China has more giant sinkholes than anywhere else on the planet and scientists are making new discoveries in their ancient forests. We went dangling from the limestone cliffs to take a look,” notes a BBC reporter. “For scientists these cavernous pits are a journey back in time, to a place where they can study animals and plants they had thought extinct. They’ve also found species they’d never seen, including types of wild orchid, ghostly white cave fish and various spiders and snails.”
Other species thought to be extinct have recently been found. A type of gecko believed to be extinct was discovered thriving on the Galápagos Islands.
A dog digging at a beach in South Africa found an animal long ago declared extinct, De Winton’s golden mole, a creature that lives in the sand. The golden mole is a creature that hasn’t been seen by scientists in almost 90 years. The blind mole lives almost entirely underground and doesn’t create long-lasting tunnels, unlike other species of moles. Instead, it “swims” through the sand, and its very sensitive hearing alerts it to vibrations above ground, letting it burrow without being seen.
The Mini Galaxy flower was found growing in the middle of a road in South Africa after not being seen in four decades.
Other species are coming back to areas where they were once extinct, such as the northern bald ibis, which has reappeared in Europe. Sturgeons recently returned to Sweden, a century after they disappeared from Swedish waters.
Wild horses recently returned to Kazakhstan after an absence of 200 years. These are genuine wild horses, unlike mustangs, which are domesticated horses that went wild. By contrast, domesticated horses are descended from the wild horses in Kazakhstan, since the grassy plains of northern Kazakhstan were the first place on earth where horses were domesticated.
Sea turtles are proliferating, with sea turtle nests tripling in Florida. Fish species are rebounding off the coast of California due to their young finding a sanctuary in abandoned oil rigs.
A baby beaver was recently born in London, the first beaver birth there in 400 years. Recently, carnivorous plants were reintroduced to English wetlands.
