Sawa (Engelhardia spicata)

Sawa (Engelhardia spicata) is a species of plant in the Juglandaceae, a tree up to 30 meters high, up to 1.5 meters wide, cylindrical trunk, branched, bark is black or dark brown and generally grows at an elevation of 500-2000 meters.

E. spicata has oval-shaped leaves, thick and stiff, dark green, glossy upper side, the tip may be tapered or may be blunt and the margins are flat. Leaves may have short stalks or may not have stalks.

Single flower on one tree. The seeds have three wings that fall completely in one cunta so that they look like rain. The bark is used to treat itching on the skin.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Fagales
Family: Juglandaceae
Genus: Engelhardia
Species: Engelhardia spicata

New living fossil, Amethyst worm lizard (Amphisbaena amethysta), from Espinhaço Mountain Range, Brazil

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Early human species inhabited highlands for availability and diversity of food

NEWS - Researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea suggest that the patchwork of ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in human evolution. Using a vast dataset of fossils, artifacts, high-resolution landscapes and 3 million-year-long simulations of Earth’s climate, a team of scientists is painting a clearer picture of how and why early humans adapted to rugged landscapes. Hominins are often found in and near mountainous regions. Now Elke Zeller and Axel Timmermann have helped explain why so many of our evolutionary relatives preferred to be “highlanders” rather than “lowlanders.” Mountainous regions are rich in biodiversity, providing a range of environmental conditions in which different species of plants and animals thrive. Steep areas typically exhibit a greater diversity, density of ecosystems and vegetation types, known as biomes. This diversity of biomes was attractive to early humans because it provided

Black-spotted longnose gudgeon (Microphysogobio punctatus) as new species and M. elongatus as synonym of M. tungtingensis

NEWS - Researchers have established the black-spotted longnose gudgeon ( Microphysogobio punctatus ) as a new species and redescribed M. elongatus (Yao & Yang, 1977) as a junior synonym of M. tungtingensis (Nichols, 1926) based on morphological analysis and molecular evidence supported by mitochondrial gene sequences. M. tungtingensis has been considered valid since its description, but its morphology is still vague especially when compared to another similar species, M. elongatus . In this study, researchers examined both species and compared several lots of specimens from a wide geographical range. There was no significant morphological difference between the two. Molecular evidence supported by mitochondrial gene sequences also showed low genetic distance and suggested that M. elongatus is a junior synonym of M. tungtingensis . At the same time, M. punctatus was found to have a similar distribution to both. M. punctatus is distributed in the Guijiang and Liujiang rivers, t

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