Will Swanson's Blog

little critters

Triops Longicaudatus

I found these little crustaceans swimming around in a shallow puddle in the middle of the Gobi desert last week, all who saw it were baffled by the mysterious presence of this aquatic wonder (a cross between a horseshoe crab and a silverfish), in the middle of the desert! It was promptly named the Williamius Alienus Gobius (or WAG!) after the heroic nature adventurer who discovered it…

But after a little searching on the interweb, I have found that it does indeed have a name, and that its eggs can lay dormant in extreme temperatures (both hot and cold) of up to 20 years. Crazy little Wags! What I did discover though, that according to the all knowing wikipedia, this species of the Notostraca crustacean family has gone unrecorded in Mongolia-

So, with wiki as my authority, I hereby name this new found gobi critter as the Williamius Alienus Notostraca Gobius (or WANG!).

ah gee… should get back to some work now…

**UPDATE** So somebody contacted me through flickr, looks like it really is an unrecorded species of triops! it’s amazing what you find when you just look down…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 3:34 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with crustaceans, gobi desert, mongolia, triops, triops longicaudatus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.