New Eyeless, Scaleless Cave Fish Discovered in Vietnam

A cave-dwelling fish with no eyes and no scales has been discovered on a tiny island in Vietnam's scenic Ha Long Bay, according to conservation group Fauna & Flora International.

The newly described fish, a type of loach, has been named Draconectes narinosus, which derives from the Greek words for dragon "drakon" and swimmer "nectes," as well as the Latin word "narinosus," which means "who has large nostrils."

Its lack of eyes and scales are actually common adaptations for animals that have evolved in the darkness of deep limestone caverns. Like other cave fish, D. narinosus is limited to a life in freshwater, which means it is likely confined to a system of subterranean caves on Van Gio Island, unable to swim out into the surrounding sea.

French-Swiss cavers reveal more of giant cave system in New Britain

A French-Swiss team of cavers has released photographs and a film from its latest expedition to a huge network of chambers and sinkholes beneath the Nakanai Ranges of West New Britain, in Papua New Guinea.

The film has premiered at a mountaineering film festival in the French city of Grenoble, and photos from the WOWO 2012 expedition will soon be available on the web.

To find out more about this underworld Isabelle Genoux talked to French speleologist and photographer Philip Bence.

The interview can be listened to on Radio Australia.

Cave Structure Tells Tale of 13,000 Winters

Scientists have found a stalagmite in an Oregon cave that tells the story of thousands of winters in the Pacific Northwest.

"Most other ways of estimating past climate, like tree-ring data, only tell us about summers, when plants are growing," Oxford University researcher Vasile Ersek said in a statement. But understanding ancient winters is also important for regions like western North America, where chilly conditions are critical for determining water resources.

For their study, Ersek and his colleagues examined a cave formation called a stalagmite that started forming 13,000 years ago in a cavern in what is now Oregon Caves National Monument. During the region's damp winters, water from the ground seeped through the cave's ceiling and trickled onto the floor, with the drips slowly forming the stalagmite over time.

Skeletons in cave reveal Mediterranean secrets

Location of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites on the
Ègadi Islands and in NW Sicily.

Genetic and chemical analyses of human skeletal remains reveal origins and food habits of first Sicilians

Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.

Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals the time when modern humans reached these islands. Mannino says, "The definitive peopling of Sicily by modern humans only occurred at the peak of the last ice age, around 19,000 -26,500 years ago, when sea levels were low enough to expose a land bridge between the island and the Italian peninsula".

The authors also analyzed the chemical composition of the human remains and found that these early settlers retained their hunter-gatherer lifestyles, relying on terrestrial animals rather than marine sources for meat. According to the study, despite living on islands during a time when sea level rise was rapid enough to change within a single human lifetime, these early settlers appear to have made little use of the marine resources available to them. The authors conclude, "These findings have crucial implications for studies of the role of seafood in the diet of Mediterranean hunter-gatherers."

Scientific article:
Mannino MA, Catalano G, Talamo S, Mannino G, Di Salvo R, et al. (2012) Origin and Diet of the Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers on the Mediterranean Island of Favignana (E`gadi Islands, Sicily). PLoS ONE 7(11): e49802. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049802

Thermal scans of bat faces warn of infected individuals before they show symptoms.

Bats are a major reservoir for the rabies virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Rabies, typically transmitted in saliva, targets the brain and is almost always fatal in animals and people if left untreated. No current tests detect rabies in live animals—only brain tissue analysis is accurate.

Searching for a way to detect the virus in bats before the animals died, rabies specialist James Ellison and his colleagues at the CDC turned to a captive colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Previous studies had found temperature increases in the noses of rabid raccoons, so the team expected to see similar results with bats.