New species of beetle discovered in Palawan

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net)—Scientists have discovered a new species of beetle that dwells in the mountain rivers of Southern Palawan and said the find indicated that the Philippines was the world’s “center of diversity” for beetles.

Dr. Henrick Freitag and and Dr. Michael Balke of the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology Dresden and the Bavarian State Collections of Zoology in Munich described the new specie of the Spider Water Beetles (Ancyronyx) as having “extremely long legs, often accompanied by an eye-catching cross-like elytral color pattern, so that they remind of spiders.”

The discovery was disclosed in a news release posted on October 18 by EurekAlert!, an online global news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world.

According to the two German scientists, the presence of the beetles in undisturbed mountain rivers of Palawan indicated that the river system was in good biological health and strengthened the reputation of Palawan as an important area of biodiversity.

“The new discoveries from the Philippines lead to the assumption that the region is the actual diversity center of the genus. By now, 10 of the 18 described species are known solely from the Philippines, of which most are endemic to the country or even to single islands,” Freitag said in the statement published online.

The new beetle specie was discovered in a research undertaken early last year in cooperation with the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development and the De La Salle University Manila, the EurekAlert! report said.

Aqua Palawana

The activity that led to the discovery of the new beetle was part of the foreign-funded research program Aqua Palawana that had been exploring the unique freshwater biodiversity of the Philippines and the biosphere reserve of Palawan for more than a decade, the report added.

Other new species of plants and animals, particularly a white orchid and a mountain shrew, have been reported in recent years after scientists surveyed portions of the newly proclaimed Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, Palawan’s longest mountain range.

Discovery of the 20 million year old Sirenia fossil in Palawan

A short trailer for Puerto Princesa Underground River with the discovery of the 20 million year old Sirenia fossil.
THE BONES of an extinct sea cow species that lived about 20 million years ago have been discovered in a cave in the Philippines by a team of Italian scientists. Several ribs and spine parts of the aquatic mammal were found in February and March in limestone rock above the waters of an underground river on the island of Palawan, said University of Florence geologist Leonardo Piccini. "The fossil is in the rock, in the cave. We cannot remove it and we don’t want to extract it. We would like to wait [for] when the technology will allow us to study the fossil without extracting it," Mr. Piccini told AFP. Speaking on the sidelines of a symposium at the presidential palace where the find was announced, Mr. Piccini said it was a rare discovery in the region from the Miocene era -- 20 million years ago. "It’s the first remains of this kind of animal in the area, so it is important in reconstructing the habitat and the diffusions of this animal in the Miocene," he added. Initial comparisons with fossil specimens suggest it belongs to one of two extinct species of plant-eating sirenia, also known as sea cows, according to research by Federico Panti and Paolo Forti, a member of the Palawan expedition. They said the animal would have been about 180 centimeters long. Two sea cow species live to this day, the dugong of the Indo-Pacific region and manatees of the Atlantic basin. The paper said such fossil finds in the East had been limited to India along with some fragmentary finds in Madagascar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Indonesian island of Java. "The specimens [found] in the Palawan Island represent the first from the Philippines and the easternmost occurrence in the region," it added. It called on the government to protect the area of the find in the Puerto Princesa subterranean river, which is being heavily promoted as a major tourist destination. -- AFP http://www.bworld.com.ph/content.php?section=Nation&title=Extinct-sea-cow-fossil-found&id=32636

Palawan safest, no earthquake faults - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Palawan safest, no earthquake faults - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

By Alcuin Papa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:50:00 01/16/2010

Filed Under: Earthquake


APART from the profusion of spectacular landscapes and seascapes that has made it the favorite of many travelers, it would seem that the paradise island of Palawan also offers the safest haven for those fearful of a Haiti-like tremor occurring in the country.

Compared to other parts of the Philippines, Palawan is “relatively stable” geologically, according to Mahar Lagmay, a professor of the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences (UP-NIGS).

“There are hardly any earthquakes in Palawan and certainly none strong enough to cause major damage. The whole island is probably the most stable area of land in the country,” Lagmay said.

An expert on earthquake faults, Lagmay has constructed a map of earthquake epicenters which he plotted using information from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from 1929 to 2009.

Lagmay said there were hardly any active faults under the island compared to the rest of the country. (A fault or fault line is a fracture in the rock within the earth’s crust that is the causal location of most earthquakes.)

Continental, not oceanic, rock

While Palawan does have fault lines, these are “old” and experts are still debating whether these fault lines are active or not, Lagmay said.

For instance, there is an ongoing and heated debate on whether the Ulugan Bay fault near the famed Palawan Underground River is active, Lagmay said.

Lagmay believes Palawan is stable largely because the island was once part of continental Asia which separated around 100 million years ago and drifted toward the Philippines.

“The rock of the island is continental and different from other parts of the country, which is made of oceanic rock,” he said.

Hence, the crust of the island is thicker at 30 kilometers, compared to the oceanic rock’s 12 km, having derived from the Pacific seabed.

“The crust of the island is thicker and older and, therefore, not as prone to earthquakes,” said Lagmay.

No major faults

The island is also not bordered by any major trench or fault line, he said.

“The South China Sea area is more stable tectonically. Combined with the continental material, there is little chance for the development of active faults in Palawan,” he said.

Also, the movement of the ground in the South China Sea is not as fast as the eastern side of Luzon, which is moving toward the Asian mainland at the rate of 7 centimeters a year, and the eastern side of Mindanao, which is moving toward the Asian mainland at 10 cm a year.

“Because of the slow movement, there is no compression of forces in the island,” Lagmay said.

On the other hand, large parts of the Philippine archipelago are sandwiched between two trenches, the Manila Trench in the west and the Philippine Trench in the east.

“Movements in these trenches generate stress in the faults. That is why there are so many earthquakes in the mainland [Philippines],” he said.

“If you ask me where I would build a house in the country, I’d say Palawan,” he said.