New Species News

Geneticists, morphologists and behavioral scientists reveal the inside story of how their research led to the description of the Tapanuli orangutan.

Wearing nothing more than leaves hanging from belts of woven vegetation, the three scientists stand in the rain with little idea of what to expect. They’ve lived and worked with…

From the Amazon and Orinoco river basins in South America, researchers have described six new species of catfish that have tentacles on their faces, spines sticking out from their heads, and…

A leaf-tailed gecko can be incredibly tricky to find. These lizards in the genus Uroplatus, found only in the forests of Madagascar, can masterfully camouflage themselves among dried leaves, sometimes…

A team of biologists surveying remote parts of the Cordillera del Cóndor (Condor mountain range) in Ecuador’s eastern Andes have described a species of tree frog that’s new to science.…

Once again this year, researchers described several new species of animals and plants after months, or even several years, of trials and tribulations. Some were tiny, like the Japan pig,…

South of Tasmania, hundreds of undersea mountains mark the deep ocean floor. Now, a monthlong survey of these seamounts in and around Australia's Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks has…

A newly discovered species of amphibian that is related to the notorious Brazilian 'penis snake' has been named after President Donald Trump in a charity auction benefiting the Rainforest Trust,…

Researchers have described a new species of giant salamander that has remained shrouded in mystery for several decades. Known from swamps in Alabama and Florida in the southern United States,…

Microbiomes of Venezuela’s lost glaciers, mile-high Andean lizards, and starving baby seals are among the recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service. The abandoned microbes of Venezuela’s last…

Franciso Sornoza, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Biodiversity in Quito, Ecuador, was hiking in the country’s southwestern highlands when a small bird caught his eye. It was perched…

“To leave my dream was difficult, but I had to do it for my son,” says Ileana Herrera, a former ecologist from Venezuela, now living in Ecuador. Herrera, like many…

New findings indicate that at current deforestation rates, all of Haiti’s primary forest will be gone within the next two decades, leading to the loss of most of the country’s…

From lavender to orange, pink to yellow polka dots — researchers have just described 17 stunning new species of sea slugs that live among coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region.…

At first glance, the slender-snouted crocodiles living in Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa look very similar to the ones in the Gambia River in West Africa. But as it turns…

JAKARTA — Less than a decade after the world was introduced to the latest species of Asian leaf-warblers, a new songbird of that group has now been described by scientists.…

Scientists searching for snake-like amphibians discovered a new species of swamp eel living in the rainforest of northeastern India. According to a paper published in the journal of Ichthyological Exploration…

Nearly 70 years ago, Edwin Ujor of the Nigerian Forestry Service collected a specimen of a tree from a forest high up in the Bamenda highlands in Cameroon. The specimen…

In a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil, researchers have found a stunning pink-and-white neon-colored fish that’s new to science. Luiz Rocha, an ichthyologist at the California Academy…

Marine ecologists have described a bright-red species of coral from Panama that’s new to science. The researchers found the coral growing at a depth of 45 to 50 meters (148…

The most popular stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, followed new deforestation from gold mining in Peru, new fish species deep in Chile’s sea, mining on Ecuador’s beaches, and hundreds…

Scientists have discovered a new species of orchid in the Amazonian rainforests of Peru. SERNANP, Peru’s national parks service, announced that the new species was discovered on Bella Durmiente mountain,…

Researchers have just described a species of colorful pygmy seahorse that’s both adorable and very easy to miss. The newly described creature, occurring in the waters off the coast of southeast Japan,…

In 2016, a group of researchers set out to explore Serra da Neve Inselberg, an isolated mountain and Angola’s second-highest peak, in search of frogs and toads. Now, they have described…

The highly venomous forest cobra, the largest of Africa’s true cobras, is not one, but five separate species, according to a new study. At first glance, forest cobras, which can…

A researcher has identified a colorful tree frog as a new species and named the amphibian Sylvia’s tree frog, Cruziohyla sylviae, after his 3-year-old granddaughter. Andrew Gray, Curator of Herpetology…

Scientists have just described a new species of shark from the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the western Atlantic Ocean. The new species was formally named Squalus clarkae,…

A team of biologists researching sea snakes in the mining town of Weipa in Australia’s remote Cape York Peninsula have accidentally discovered a venomous snake that’s new to science. The black-and-white…

JAKARTA — Twenty-five of the world’s top environmental scientists have lambasted plans to construct a hydroelectric dam in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, because it would threaten the rarest species of great…

In a counterintuitive surprise, a new study finds that fish species evolve more than twice as rapidly at the poles than in the tropics. The reason why isn’t currently known.