COPENHAGEN,
Denmark (Reuters) - Danish scientists have found a completely
new kind of animal down a cold well in Greenland and are keeping
a colony of them in a fridge, the Arctic magazine Polarfronten
reported on the Internet Thursday.
The 0.1-millimeter
long freshwater organism does not fit into any one of the previously
known animal families -- making it only the fourth such creature
to be discovered on the planet in the past 100 years, Polarfronten
said.
Studies of
the animal named ``Limnognathia maerski'' show that it shares
some characteristics with certain seawater life-forms.
Scientists
from Copenhagen University and Aarhus University in Denmark have
established a new phylum -- or family -- for the tiny animal,
whose most remarkable feature is a set of very complicated jaws.
It has now
got its own branch, Micrognathozoa, on the tree of the world's
known animals, which are divided into slightly more than 30 families,
Polarfronten said.
Limnognathia
maerski, which reproduces through parthenogenesis, uses its jaws
to scrape the bacteria and algae it feeds on from underwater moss
growing in icy wells which freeze over during the long Arctic
winter.
The animal
was found in samples taken in 1994 from a well in Isunngua on
Disco island in northwestern Greenland. A colony of the tiny creatures,
all females, is in a refrigerator at Copenhagen University.
Greenland,
the world's largest island, is part of Denmark.
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