Species Discovery

An expedition team has found a rare Brazilian tree that botanists thought might be extinct after nearly two centuries without a confirmed sighting. The Pernambuco holly tree (Ilex sapiiformis), which can grow to a height of 12 meters (nearly 40 feet), was found again in March in northeast Brazil by a team led by ecologist […]

Remember Indiana Jones’ famous line “Snakes! Why’d it have to be snakes?” in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark? That iconic moment has taken on a new twist as the actor behind the adventurous archaeologist, Harrison Ford, has become the namesake of a newly described snake species. In the forests of Otishi National […]

In November 2011, when a pregnant beaked whale drifted ashore on New Zealand’s Waiatoto Spit, Ramari Stewart, an Indigenous whale watcher, noticed that the whale looked slightly different to those usually stranded. It measured about 5 meters (17 feet) long, and after its skeleton was prepared and featured in the National Museum of New Zealand, […]

Out in the azure waters and colorful corals of the Maldives, a resplendent, rainbow-hued fish has become the first to be named and described by a Maldivian researcher. New to science, the rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) is named in the local Dhivehi language. Finifenmaa means “rose” and is a tribute to the islands’ pink-hued […]

A photo of an odd-looking amphibian drew attention on Twitter last week, where it was described as a “smooth lil fella”, compared to a melted tootsie roll candy, and likened to the chocolate frogs from Harry Potter. “I’m quite surprised at how fast the popularity of this frog is rising up,” Germán Chávez, a researcher […]

Up in the trees of a misty sky island, folded into the foliage, a tiny rainfrog bears the name of a climate giant. The new-to-science species, found on a mountain in Panama, has been named after climate activist Greta Thunberg. Greta Thunberg’s rainfrogs (Pristimantis gretathunbergae) are minuscule (about 3 to 4 centimeters or 1.1 to […]

When researchers found a begonia plant twice as tall as a person, they knew they had something extraordinary. Of the more than 2,000 known begonia species, most are the size of large herbs or small shrubs. In late 2020, during surveys in Mêdog county in southern Tibet, Daike Tian and his colleagues from the Shanghai […]

With humans sending probes to explore Mars and the sun, one might think we’ve already explored the full extent of our own planet. But scientists say we’ve only begun to find and describe the riches here on Earth. “I think most people believe that we know most species on Earth … but in the best-case […]

Researchers have found a snake species never before described by science — on Instagram! During the COVID-19 lockdowns in India, Virendar Bhardwaj, a master’s student at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, was home in Chamba, a six-hour drive away at the foot of the Himalayas. While exploring his own backyard, Bhardwaj began photographing the snakes, […]