Popa langur, a critically endangered monkey that lives in Myanmar, is one of the newly described species.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the museum could have been closed to the public for the longest time since World War II, but researchers continued to toil behind the scenes, according to a statement issued Tuesday.
These hundreds of new species have been described in 2020 by researchers working with specimens from the museum’s vast collection.
A natricine snake was one of the nine new snake species described in 2020.
Abhijit das
Describing a new species means gathering information about the shape and structure of an organism, writing the research in a paper and sending it for review by the scientific community, Ken Norris, head of life sciences at the Natural History Museum, told CNN.
“Ask if that new specimen is different enough from anything else that has been seen before to be considered a new species,” Norris said. “So you’re describing it for the first time.”
Among the newly described species this year is the Popa Iangur (Trachypithecus popa), a monkey that lives on the slopes of an extinct volcano in Myanmar.
Actias keralana is a moth found in India.
Nässig et al. 2020
It is already considered critically endangered, with 200-260 people living in the wild, but experts hope its designation will help preserve the monkey, according to the museum.
“The basics of naming things or recognizing that they are distinct quickly pick up their importance in conservation,” Norris said. “As soon as you know that then it becomes an instant priority for conservation, whereas before it was not.”
A dozen new reptiles and amphibians have been described this year, including a lizard with a ridge from Borneo, two new species of frog and nine new snakes.
The museum’s collection also contained a single specimen of a new species of meadow-free worm salamander (Oedipina ecuatoriana), a skin-breathing amphibian that was collected more than a century ago.
An armored snail, or Armilimax pauljamisoni, is presented here.
Kimmig et al. 2020
Beetles are the largest number on the list, with 170 newly named species, followed by bees and wasps with 70 new species.
One of them – Bombus tibeticus – lives on the Tibetan Plateau of Mongolia at 5,640 meters above sea level, making it one of the highest species recorded by bumblebees.
There were also 51 species of snails, nine species of moths, six new species of centipedes, nine flatworms and a butterfly described in 2020.
The impression of an artist describes the wombat-like pouch Mukupirna nambensis.
Peter Schouten
Scientists have also described 122 new fossil species, including Armilimax pauljamisoni, which looks like a kind of armored snail, and a giant wombat-like marsupial called Mukupirna nambensis.
The marsupial giant lived 25 million years ago in what is now Australia and would have grown to a size similar to that of a black bear.
The researchers described 10 new species of minerals, of which there are only about 6,000 known species in the world.
And Norris does not expect a decrease in the number of newly described species in the coming years.
“Right now we think that, as a basic assumption, maybe 20% of life has been described in one form or another,” he said, leaving much life to be described.