Completely New Species Kingdom Discovered

I heard this on NPR the other day - some scientists discovered a new Kingdom (now just Plants, Animals, and Fungi) called Cryptomycota.  These microscopic organisms exist throughout the environment, but no one is sure yet what they do.  This just struck a chord with me because it emphasizes how little we understand how our world works - I am sure they get destroyed with tilling and chemicals and we didn't even know they existed or what their role is in the system.  How can scientists miss an entire species Kingdom?

From an article:
" Cryptomycota - the new group described by Jones et al. (2011) – is exceptional. Now, to be fair, it’s not going to turn our conventional view of taxonomy on its head. Cryptomycota is an addition to the tree of life, not a deletion or revision. What is truly exciting is that an entire new group of organism, potentially as diverse and broadly distributed as Kingdom Fungi, has only recently been discovered. Most of the time, when major changes to the tree of life are made, it is because of new data, new analysis tools, or the discovery of a few new species that fill in some missing bits. When the now-defunct Monera became Archaebacteria and Eubacteria, it wasn’t because we had never seen an Archaen until the study, we just didn’t quite understand what Archeans were.  Cryptomycota are entirely new."
http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=10395

Paul, feel free to move this to meaningless drivel, but I thought other people might find it interesting.  They (We) missed an entire Kingdom!  Are there more?

thanks,
Patrick

On last check the had 7 kingdoms in the domain Eukaryota. While this is interesting indeed I don't think that one team writing one paper can make anything, no matter how radically different from what is now known, a new kingdom, that sort of change is based on a broad concensus within the taxonomic community. If it is eventually made a new kingdom then it will be in a year or two at the earliest.

Horton Hears a Who?

I think this is meaningful. I just also got my mind blown reading that article--when I was in school, they stil had 5 kingdoms, and the thing about prokaryotes and eukaryotes was a side-thought. Now they're up to 7! and they have NO RESEMBLANCE to what I waas taught. gadfreakinzooks. I mean, this is pretty incredible. It shows me just how much less is really fixed than I had assumed. In my garden I'll now be even more committed ot keeping an open mind.

Is it not fixed and changing rapidly? or do we just not know, not discovered it until now? Our velocity of discovery is much faster than our ability to disseminate the information.

This is why when anyone says something is "settled science" my BS meter goes off--either they are ignorant or they have an agenda.