COLOMBO — In 2017, herpetologist Sameera Suranjan Karunarathna and his team of researchers undertook a detailed study of lizards in more than 100 locations across Sri Lanka to record the…
From Japan’s Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima islands, researchers have described a new-to-science species of orchid that produces dark brown flowers that likely never bloom. Kenji Suetsugu of the Kobe University Graduate…
In 2016, researchers digging along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon uncovered hundreds of fossils of rodents, bats and other animals. Among the fossils was an…
On the remote mountaintops of Queensland, Australia, researchers have rediscovered two species of ferns last seen more than 50 years ago. One of the ferns, Hymenophyllum whitei, was first recorded…
In 2010, researchers surveying the eastern Gulf of Mexico to study what sperm whales eat, collected numerous animals from the ocean’s depths. While examining the collection in 2013, Mark Grace…
From the Usambara mountains of northeastern Tanzania, researchers have described a new species of tree that could already be on its way toward extinction. The tree, which grows up to…
It was a chance encounter. But it turned Bunty Tao's life around. In mid-June, a group of boys were heading back from a fishing trip to a forest near the…
If there’s an iconic image of the late Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel and Fendi, it’s his signature black-and-white style: white ponytail, black sunglasses, black-and-white suit with high,…
The global trade of products that come at the expense of tropical forest is driving many primate species closer to extinction, a new study suggests. The research, published June 17…
It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Julian Bayliss, a conservation scientist and explorer who recently discovered a hidden rainforest on top of an isolated mountain in…
Sometimes looking for rare plants can mean taking extreme steps. And for decades, botanists at the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG), a nonprofit based on the island of Kauaʻi in…
When Rohan Pandit and Wangchu Phiang accidentally stumbled upon a brown snake on a steep slope of a forest in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in India, little did…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
A new species of short-tailed whip scorpion has been discovered in the eastern Amazon. The discovery was made by two arachnologists, Gustavo Ruiz and Roberta Valente of the Universidade Federal…
Over the past decade, archaeologists have dug out several pieces of bones and teeth from a cave on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. These fossil remains, all estimated…
Researchers have finally described a new species of skink from Angola, specimens of which have lurked on museum shelves for more than 70 years. Belgian herpetologist Raymond Laurent first suspected that…
The world of miniature frogs has five new members, all from the island nation of Madagascar and each smaller than your thumbnail. Referring to their miniaturized forms, herpetologists have named…
LAMANDAU, Indonesia — At the headwaters of the Belantikan River on the island of Borneo, an organization committed to protecting orangutans is extending its efforts to a slightly less charismatic…
The waters of the eastern Baltic Sea around Finland are home to the flounder, a flatfish with both its eyes on one side of the head that uses its camouflage…
Scandal surrounds indigenous management of a major Easter Island protected area, a newly described freshwater crab species in Colombia, declines in Central America’s peccaries, and a man who can recognize…
All the amphibian and reptile species that have ever been recorded in Angola have now been included in a comprehensive atlas. Covering published records from 1840 to 2017, the atlas…
The last time scientists officially reported seeing a living Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto), the world’s largest known bee, was in 1981. Now, in Indonesia’s North Maluku archipelago, the giant bee has…
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,…