Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

sulfates. The methanogens have been known for a
long time, but the other types are recent discoveries.
Woese determined that the RNA sequences of archaea
are as different from bacteria as they are from
all other forms of life (eucarya), so he proposed that
all life is made up of these three basic domains.
Big-fin squid. Magnapinna pacifica. Known
only from one paralarva and two 2-inch-long juveniles,
this shallow-water, eastern Pacific squid
required a new family when it was described in
1998 by Michael Vecchione and Richard E.
Young. Its most distinctive feature is a massive terminal
fin that is as long or longer than its body. A
21-foot-long “mystery squid” with long tentacles
that was photographed at depths of 6,000–15,000
feet by staffers of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute in May 2001 may turn out to be
the adult form of this animal.
Black sea nettle. Chrysaora achlyos. This eastern
Pacific jellyfish can be quite massive, with a darkpurple
bell that measures up to 3 feet in diameter
and pink tentacles nearly 20 feet long. First described
by Joel W. Martin and others in 1997, it
constitutes the largest invertebrate discovery of the
twentieth century. Specimens had been photographed
as long ago as the 1920s.
Blind cirrate octopus. Cirrothauma murrayi. A
deep-sea cephalopod that is completely blind. Discovered
in the North Atlantic in 1910.
Cooloola monster. Cooloola propator. A cricketlike
insect discovered in Cooloola National Park,
Queensland, in 1976; its discovery required the
creation of a new family, the Cooloolidae.
Crinoids. Although there are more than 650
living species of crinoids, or sea lilies, they are better
known as common marine fossils. A few recently
discovered species are the sole representatives
of families long thought extinct. Guillecrinus
reunionensis, belonging to the Paleozoic Subclass
Inadunata, was brought up from 6,500 feet off
Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean by Michel
Roux in 1985; G. neocaledonicus was found off
New Caledonia in the Pacific a few years later. Another
living fossil from the Cretaceous period,
Gymnocertus richeri of the Order Cyrtocrinida, was
discovered off the coast of New Guinea and described
in 1987; it was found to produce a group
of pigmented molecules, since called gymnochromes,
that are useful in treating the viruses
that cause herpes and dengue fever.
Cycliophora. A phylum created in 1995 by
Peter Funch and Reinhardt Kristensen to accommodate
Symbion pandora, a tiny, sessile animal attached
to a Norway lobster taken from the North
Sea. Smaller than a pinhead, this strange animal
reproduces asexually by budding off male and female
larvae from its digestive tract.
Dracula ant. Adetomyrma venatrix. First described
in 1993 from specimens found in Madagascar,
these ants show some anatomical characteristics
that suggest a closer affinity to ancestral
wasps than other ants. In addition, they feed off
the blood (hemolymph) of their larvae. The first
colony was discovered in 2000.
Giant huntsman spider. Heteropoda maxima.
Rediscovered in 2001 by Peter Jaeger in a specimen
collection of the Museum of Natural History
in Paris (where it had been stored for seventy
years), this large arachnid is found in Laos and has
a legspan of 9–12 inches.
Giant mantis prawn. Erugosquilla grahami. A
16-inch-long shrimp with excellent eyesight and
huge praying mantis–like pincers was discovered
in 1999 by Shane Ahyong just east of Sydney’s
harbor bridge, New South Wales, Australia. Said
to be very good to eat.
Giant Tambusisi tree-nymph. Idea tambusisiana.
Butterfly with a wingspan of 6.5 inches
discovered on the slopes of Mount Tambusisi, Sulawesi,
Indonesia, in 1980.
Giant vent tubeworm. Riftia pachyptila. Giant
tubeworms with blood-red plumes that live next to
hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor. They were
discovered at the same time as the vents themselves,
in 1977, when the submersible Alvin investigated
thermal anomalies near the Galápagos Islands.
Tubeworm larvae attach themselves to the
lava near the vents, building long, white tubes as
they grow. The plumes absorb sulfurous water that
bacteria inside the worm use to generate energy
and food for the worms. The worms grow at phenomenal
rates, up to 34 inches per year, making
them the fastest-growing marine invertebrates
alive. The tubes extend to a maximum of 6–8 feet,
completely without benefit of sunlight.
Giant white clam. Calyptogena magnifica. First
seen in 1977 near deep-sea hydrothermal vents in
the Galápagos Rift, this foot-long clam has a white
shell and blood-red flesh that contains large
amounts of hemoglobin.
Graptolite. Cephalodiscus graptolitoides. Discovered
at a depth of 830 feet off the island of Lifou
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