Coelacanth Island Has New Tiny Bat {+ Photo}

Scientists have identified a new species of bat weighing just five grams in the Comoros island archipelago off eastern Africa, the Natural History Museum in Geneva said on June 24, 2009. The Comoros islands are famed in cryptozoological history as the first known recognized rediscovered home of the 65 million-year-old survival, the Coelacanths.

The new mammal has been named Miniopterus aelleni in honor of the late Villy Aellen, a former head of the Geneva museum and a major bat specialist. Miniopterus (long winged bat) is a genus of vesper bats and the only genus of subfamily Miniopterinae.

Australian, Madagascan, Swiss and US scientists were documenting bats in the former French colony when they came across the new species, which originates from nearby Madagascar, the museum said in a statement.

Some 10 new species of mammal have been identified every year since 2000, the museum said.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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