72 Found Discovery and Recovery

CHAPTER 1 Found (and Lost) WORKERS FIND A 60-YEAR-OLD UNOPENED LOVE LETTER. WHEN THEY RETURN IT, WILL THE COUPLE STILL BE IN LOVE? In 1952, Dick Hauck and his girlfriend Arlene wrote many love letters to each other. Dick was far away, serving in the US Army, and Arlene was home in Minnesota. They wrote every day. Then Dick wrote the most important letter of them all. He sent it on March 31, 1952. Arlene didn't get it until 60 years later. In the letter, Dick asked Arlene to marry him. Workers found the letter in 2012. They were fixing the home where Arlene grew up when they discovered the unopened letter hidden underneath a part of the floor. Instead of throwing the old letter away, they used the name and address on the envelope to find Arlene and deliver it to her. The good news is Dick and Arlene had gotten married anyway. They are still married today.

There are many different things you can find. Like the workers in this story, you can find something that was lost. You can find your keys or your cellphone hidden under the seat on your car. You can also find things that were not lost, but haven't been discovered yet. You can find a new species of fish living deep under the water. You can find the cure for an illness or a new medicine to help people feel better. You can find out something. "To find something out" means to discover or learn new knowledge. For example, you can find out that you like swimming after years of being afraid of the water. You can also find the time or find the energy to do something you have always wanted to do. What else can you find? Read this book and find out!

CHAPTER 2 Aha! IN 2006, ALMOST 17,000 NEW ANIMALS AND PLANTS WERE FOUND. THAT'S ALMOST 50 A DAY! There is something very unusual living deep in the high mountains of Myanmar, the country formerly called Burma. It is a monkey that sneezes when it rains. The monkey has almost no nose, and when water runs down its face, it sneezes it away. Have you heard of it? Probably not. Nobody had heard of it before 2010. That's when the monkey was found for the first time. Every year, an amazing number of new plant and animal species are found. Modern ways of collecting and identifying living things allow scientists to find more new species than ever before. Some say we are in a "Golden Age of Discovery." To show this, scientists at the University of Arizona counted the number of new plants and animals found only in 2006. The number? 16,969!

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About half of the new animals found in 2006 were insects. In addition, researchers counted 2,000 new plants. Mammals were less common. They made up about 1 percent of the new species. One reason for the high number of new species is transportation. Modern transportation allows researchers to travel to new areas that had been difficult to visit and search in the past. The sneezing monkey is an example of a new species found because researchers were able to go deeper into forests and higher into mountains than ever before.

Another reason for the high number of newly discovered species is genetics. Genetic testing tells us more than other methods of identification. For example, scientists used genetic testing on a common type of butterfly called the skipper butterfly. They learned that this butterfly was actually made up of ten different species of butterfly. From the outside, the butterflies all looked identical, or exactly the same, but the genes showed differences. Testing showed that each different species had its own characteristics and history. In a similar study, a group of scientists tested a collection of 730 known birds and bats. To their surprise, they discovered 21 new species in the collection. Each new species looked the same as a known species. The differences only appeared when they studied the genes of the animals. New species aren't the only things you can find with genetic testing.