British scientists have discovered the first species of Yeti crab from hydrothermal systems in Antarctica. First news regarding this was published in the journal Plos One. Researches have named this species as Kiwa Tyleri after Paul Tyler, world-renowned British deep-sea and polar biologist professor.
Characteristics of Kiwa Tyleri
- Found: usually in warm-water refuge of hydrothermal vent systems surrounded by the cold polar waters in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.
- Usually lives in very limited sized habitat near the warm-water hydrothermal vent site.
- They can not move between vent sites because of the hostile, low temperature and extreme polar environment. So they, occur in highly-packed densities.
- For food- They are ,mainly dependent on chemosynthetic bacteria which overgrow the surfaces of hydrothermal vent chimneys.
- Body: body is densely covered by bristles known as setae.
- Appearance: Fur like body due to bacteria living on it.
Nuts and Bolts of Antarctica
- It is Earth’s southernmost continent,
- has the highest average elevation of all the continents
- There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent.
- Antarctica is home to more than 70 lakes that lie at the base of the continental ice sheet
- Antarctica is the coldest of Earth’s continents.
- The coldest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F).
- Antarctica has no government.
