Startling Species Rediscoveries in California
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 7:56 am
from the San Francisco Chronicle
Call it "CSI: Sierra Nevada." On Aug. 11, a mysterious creature took a bite out of a bait bag slung in a secluded pass north of Yosemite National Park. As the animal gnawed on the bits of chicken contained in the sock, a remote-controlled camera clicked nearby.
A few weeks later, geneticists at UC Davis extracted saliva samples from the fabric, ran a series of DNA tests and found that they had stumbled upon one of the most elusive mammals in North America--a Sierra Nevada red fox.
The saliva and blurry photographs from the Sonora Pass were the first recorded evidence of the carnivore in the region since the 1920s, when the lucrative fur trade all but eliminated the population outside of a tiny clan in Lassen Volcanic National Park. The only other known specimens are pelts and bones stored at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
The rest of the article is here.
Call it "CSI: Sierra Nevada." On Aug. 11, a mysterious creature took a bite out of a bait bag slung in a secluded pass north of Yosemite National Park. As the animal gnawed on the bits of chicken contained in the sock, a remote-controlled camera clicked nearby.
A few weeks later, geneticists at UC Davis extracted saliva samples from the fabric, ran a series of DNA tests and found that they had stumbled upon one of the most elusive mammals in North America--a Sierra Nevada red fox.
The saliva and blurry photographs from the Sonora Pass were the first recorded evidence of the carnivore in the region since the 1920s, when the lucrative fur trade all but eliminated the population outside of a tiny clan in Lassen Volcanic National Park. The only other known specimens are pelts and bones stored at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
The rest of the article is here.