New species found in city park
NEWS.COM.AU
July 25, 2002
SCIENTISTS have discovered a new species described as a "mindless killing
machine" in New York's Central Park.
The newest New Yorker is a tiny centipede, which could be the world's smallest.
It is the first new species found in Central Park in more than a century, according to
researchers from the city's American Museum of Natural History.
They told the New York Times they found the tiny bug in leaf litter - piles of broken
twigs, fungi and decomposing plant and tree leaves mixed with soil.
It was among a job lot of centipedes and millipedes the museum sent for identification to
Richard Hoffman, the curator for invertebrates at the Virginia Museum of Natural History.
Hoffman sent several he was unable to identify to specialists in Italy, who declared the
centipede a first and promptly named it "Nannarrup hoffmani" - or Hoffman's
dwarf centipede.
"I was astonished," Hoffman told the Times.
"The odds against it surviving in a densely populated city - and, in particular, the
constant trampling of millions of Central Park visitors - were astronomical."
All centipedes are predators with poisonous fangs and will eat any prey they can sink
their jaws into.
"They're totally mindless killing machines," Hoffman said.
END OF
REPORT
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