![]() Dasht-e Lut of Iran, a desert which contains a collection of exclusive desert relieves and geological and geomorphological records of the world. The present study aims at studying and introducing wonderful geomorphological attractions and numerous geotourism potentials of very hot paradise of the earth, e.g. “I felt like I lost a part of my soul in the desert.Given special tectonic and climatic conditions, Iran has the most diverse land-forms and beautiful geological phenomena, which could attract many scientific, adventurous tourists and geological researchers. “We could not help it, we started dancing,” he said. One night, a dust storm concluded, unexpectedly, in fat droplets of rain. “The first five days, the Lut is beautiful and exciting,” Dr. Swirling dust storms frequently cocooned them in their cars for hours at a time and even broke several cameras as tiny grains of dust scratched the lenses. The team only had enough water to drink and wash their hands once or twice a day. Temperatures range from 122 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to 35 degrees Fahrenheit at night. “But the genetic difference made it obvious that it was a different species.”Īlthough the shrimps survive just fine in the desert, lasting 10 days in the Lut is a feat for any human. Alireza Sari, a crustacean biologist at the University of Tehran, said he suspected that several of his past discoveries of P. spinosa, which is found elsewhere in Iran. tserensodnomi, which is found in Mongolia, and P. Alonso, the researchers did not make an unequivocal distinction between the morphology of the new species and that of P. The morphological differences between the new shrimp and a Mongolian fairy shrimp, Phallocryptus tserensodnomi, were slight: a longer frontal organ, and curvier antennae.Īccording to Dr. Schwentner compared the genetics and morphology of the shrimp to the four known species in the genus Phallocryptus, he determined that the shrimp was a new, fifth species. Rajaei asked Martin Schwentner, the paper’s lead author and a researcher at the Natural History Museum of Vienna who studies similar crustaceans in Australia, to take a look. Unsure if the shrimp was a new species, Dr. Rajaei in the water and together they scooped up the animals with an insect net. Rudov, another author on the paper, joined Dr. Hadi Fahimi, a herpetologist, and Alexander V. Rajaei waded in the shallow pool he saw milky white creatures swimming around his legs, leaving trails of tiny bubbles. The 87 degree Fahrenheit water - the temperature of a warm, creamy soup - felt refreshing in the immense heat, and as Dr. Rajaei had never seen a lake so big in the Lut, but the desert had experienced its first heavy rainfall after a decade of drought. One day, a little before noon, with the sun high and blazing, the expedition found a lake glimmering in the middle of the desert like an oasis. Recent expeditions have uncovered an unexpected diversity of spiders, lizards and other fauna, but the life that has been described in seasonal ponds was limited to single-celled archaea. In Farsi, Dasht-e Lut translates to “desert of emptiness.” “I suppose they gave it this name because many people believed there was no life in this desert,” Dr. He had come to the Lut in March 2017, his second visit, on an expedition of 17 people - drivers, medics and researchers - to observe the insects that lived there. Hossein Rajaei, an entomologist at the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History in Germany and an author on the study, was the first to spy the shrimp. The researchers described the new species, Phallocryptus fahimii, this summer in the journal Zoology in the Middle East. “I am not surprised by the presence of Phallocryptus anywhere,” said Miguel Alonso, a biologist at the University of Barcelona who was not involved with the research. So the presence of shrimp in the Lut, while striking, was not entirely out of character. In 2005, NASA’s Aqua satellite recorded a ground temperature of 159.3 degrees Fahrenheit. But the Lut Desert, often called the hottest spot in the world, may be the last place one would think to find water, even seasonally. For a month or two, the fairy shrimp frolic, swimming upside-down in their ephemeral lakes and laying their eggs before they die or the pool dries up, whichever comes first.įairy shrimps live in brief spurts in seasonal ponds throughout the world, from steppes in Mongolia to woodlands in Long Island. But when rains come, the eggs unfurl into small, feathery crustaceans called fairy shrimp, the freshwater cousins of brine shrimp. Some may have been laid in the dunes decades ago. Tiny, desiccated eggs, buried among the ginger-colored granules, drink in the water and begin to hatch. In springtime, when the rain gathers into pools in Iran’s Dasht-e Lut Desert, the sand comes alive.
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