Worldwide, a total of 16,969 species new to science were discovered and described in 2006, an average of nearly 50 species per day. That was the year an international team of scientists hit the jackpot in New Guinea, uncovering what the Independent described as "an astonishing mist-shrouded 'lost world' of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests."

This year's discoveries have been no less thrilling.  "When Francesco Rovero first saw the image captured by one of his automatic cameras in a remote Tanzanian forest, he knew he'd never seen anything quite like it," reported Conservation International in a January press release. "It was the size of a small dog, covered in orange and gray fur, and had a long snout like an elephant." The report went on to describe the first new species of giant elephant-shrew to be discovered in more than 126 years.

In February, New Zealand primatologist Jean-Phillipe Boubli discovered a new species of uakari monkey while hunting with the Yanomamo on a tributary of the Rio Negro in Brazil. "If we are still finding monkeys, imagine how many invertebrates and things like that are still out there," Boubli told National Geographic News. "It's pretty amazing."

And in April, the same scientist who discovered our smallest known lizard and most diminutive frog also found the world's tiniest snake, under a rock in Barbados. He named it after his wife. Roy Orbison got an Indian whirligig beetle named after him.

Then, last summer, came a tantalizing announcement from British primatologist Ian Redmond, a senior consultant to the UN's Great Apes Survival Project. Two hairs found in the jungles of Meghalaya in the far northeast of India appeared, under the microscope, to resemble those of a human, a chimp, a gorilla--or the purported "yeti hairs" brought back by the late Sir Edmund Hilary's 1953 Everest expedition.

Tribal people living in Meghalaya have long told "stories about the Mande Burung, or the Man of the Jungle," reported the Independent. "At night, when darkness falls like a black cloak thrown across the forest, they sit and share stories of a creature living among the trees, half man and half ape, occasionally glimpsed through the foliage or more often heard, its strange call echoing across the rice paddies. It is said to stand 10 ft tall and weigh up to 45 stone."

"Only two years ago a new species of macaque was discovered in northern India," said Redmond. "It's perfectly possible that there are pockets of jungle there where a previously undiscovered primate could exist."

An initial series of tests at Oxford Brookes University proved inconclusive, and the hairs were sent to a U.S. lab for DNA testing. "We now know for definite that these hairs do not belong to Asiatic black bear, they do not belong to a wild boar and they do not resemble hairs from various species of macaque monkeys," Redmond told the BBC News. "These hairs remain an enigma."

As yeti watchers everywhere awaited news from America, strange creatures continued to come out of hiding: In August, researchers in the Sulawesi highlands netted a pygmy tarsier, a small nocturnal primate last seen alive in 1921. "It was truly amazing," said expedition leader Sharon Gursky-Doyen. "My whole body was shaking."

In September, marine scientists reported hundreds of new animal species on Australian reefs as part of the Census of Marine Life, an international effort to catalog all life in the oceans.

Finally, on October 13, the Americans were ready with their verdict. "Scientists in the U.S. who have examined hairs claimed to belong to a yeti in India," stated the BBC News, "say that in fact they belong to a species of Himalayan goat." A goral, to be more specific.

A disappointment, yes, but not a defeat. "Perhaps we have a more modest discovery," Redmond said, "extending the known range of the goral rather than confirming the existence of the lowland yeti." And with that, the jungles of Meghalaya slipped from the news.

Four days later, Borneo was back in the headlines: "It lives high up in the rainforest canopy . . . its eggs have tiny wings so they can glide from one tree to another, and now it has officially entered the record books as the longest insect species alive today" (22.3 inches).

For now, the jungles of Meghalaya are quiet. But a remark by the curator of stick insects at the Natural History Museum in London (where the world's longest insect is on display in the Creepy Crawlies gallery) leaves room for all kinds of speculation: "It's amazing that such big things are still out there," he said, "and makes you wonder what else there might be."

Further reading:
* An interview with E.O. Wilson, the father of the Encyclopedia of Life (New York Times)
* The Aggregator: New of the week in links