| COPENHAGEN,
Denmark (Reuters) - Danish scientists have found a completely
new kind of animal down a cold well in Greenland and are keeping
a colony of them in a fridge, the Arctic magazine Polarfronten
reported on the Internet Thursday.
The
0.1-millimeter long freshwater organism does not fit into
any one of the previously known animal families -- making
it only the fourth such creature to be discovered on the
planet in the past 100 years, Polarfronten said.
Studies
of the animal named ``Limnognathia maerski'' show that it
shares some characteristics with certain seawater life-forms.
Scientists
from Copenhagen University and Aarhus University in Denmark
have established a new phylum -- or family -- for the tiny
animal, whose most remarkable feature is a set of very complicated
jaws.
It has
now got its own branch, Micrognathozoa, on the tree of the
world's known animals, which are divided into slightly more
than 30 families, Polarfronten said.
Limnognathia
maerski, which reproduces through parthenogenesis, uses
its jaws to scrape the bacteria and algae it feeds on from
underwater moss growing in icy wells which freeze over during
the long Arctic winter.
The
animal was found in samples taken in 1994 from a well in
Isunngua on Disco island in northwestern Greenland. A colony
of the tiny creatures, all females, is in a refrigerator
at Copenhagen University.
Greenland,
the world's largest island, is part of Denmark.
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