• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Golden Mole “Lost” Since 1936 Found Swimming Through Sand Dunes In South Africa

November 28, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Scientists are rejoicing as a species that was believed to be lost for the last 80 years has been rediscovered alive and well. The De Winton’s golden mole was last seen in 1936, but now becomes the 11th of Re:wild’s “most wanted lost species list” to be rediscovered since the Search For Lost Species launched in 2017.

Looking just a little like a nugget came to life, the De Winton’s golden mole, Cryptochloris wintoni, is partial to sandy shores and arid shrublands. Finding it was never going to be easy, being a golden mole that “swims” in golden sands, and it was certainly no walk in the park for the researchers behind its rediscovery.

Advertisement

They were tasked with surveying up to 18 kilometers (11.2 miles) of dune habitat a day in order to detect the mole using environmental DNA (eDNA), which is the DNA that animals shed as they move through the environment. It comes in many forms, but for a small mammal, you might expect skin cells, hair, and bodily fluids.

It might sound like finding a tiny molecule in a massive stack of slightly larger molecules, but in some ways, it was easier than trying to sneak up on a De Winton’s mole as they have superpowers when it comes to hearing and detecting surface disturbances. This means they’d be long gone before a scientist managed to excavate them from the sand, but the eDNA technique is by no means easy.



“Extracting DNA from soil is not without its challenges, but we have been honing our skills and refining our techniques – even before this project – and we were fairly confident that if De Winton’s golden mole was in the environment, we would be able to detect it by finding and sequencing its DNA,” said Samantha Mynhardt, conservation geneticist with the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and Stellenbosch University, in a statement seen by IFLScience.

Fortunately, the hard work paid off as 100 soil samples later, the team determined that there were several species of golden mole living in dunes along the northwest coast of South Africa. There were two more common species – Cape golden mole and Grant’s golden mole – as well as Van Zyl’s golden mole, which is endangered and rare, but the fourth and most surprising discovery was our “long lost” De Winton’s golden mole.

Advertisement

“Though many people doubted that De Winton’s golden mole was still out there, I had good faith that the species had not yet gone extinct,” said Cobus Theron, senior conservation manager for EWT and a member of the search team. 

“I was convinced it would just take the right detection method, the proper timing, and a team passionate about finding it. Now not only have we solved the riddle, but we have tapped into this eDNA frontier where there is a huge amount of opportunity not only for moles, but for other lost or imperiled species.”

The study is published in Biodiversity And Conservation.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Facebook questions British watchdog’s authority to order Giphy sale
  2. S.Africa’s Zuma seeks to replace prosecutor in arms trial
  3. Burro raises $10.9M for autonomous produce field transport
  4. How Much Heat Can A Human Take? Scientists Crack The Critical Limit

Source Link: Golden Mole "Lost" Since 1936 Found Swimming Through Sand Dunes In South Africa

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version