It’s the time of year when scientific organizations take a look back at some of the most amazing new animals, plants, fungi and other species they discovered in the past 12 months.
“Finding and describing new species is vital for understanding the biodiversity of our planet and protecting it from further loss,” Shannon Bennett, chief scientist at the California Academy of Sciences, said in a news release reporting 138 new species discoveries by its scientists in 2024. They range from a fish called a goby that lives in sponges in Indonesian waters to an endangered dahlia from Oaxaca, Mexico.
Bennett said so far, only a 10th of the world’s species have been discovered, and many of them may be important to the ecosystems in which they are found. “We can’t protect or care about what we don’t know exists.”
Scientists at the Natural History Museum in London reported discovering 190 new species in 2024, but its list includes fossils in addition to living things such as a clearwing moth and a vegetarian piranha named for its resemblance to the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Meanwhile, Kew Gardens in London and scientific publisher Pensoft each issued top 10 lists of their favourite discoveries in the past year.
Scouring science news release from 2024 also reveals some gems, including the world’s biggest hummingbird and a new armadillo.
Here are a few of the coolest finds.
‘Starry night’ gecko
This tiny lizard was found in the South Western Ghats, a mountain range in India. In announcing the discovery in March, Ishan Agarwal, a researcher with the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation, said its back reminded researchers of a famous work by 19th-century Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. “The striking colouration of the new species is reminiscent of one of his most iconic paintings, The Starry Night.”
The description of new the species, officially named Cnemaspis vangoghi, was published in the journal ZooKeys. Its publisher, Pensoft, gave it the No. 1 spot on its list of top 10 new species of 2024. It says they were chosen from new species described in its journals and not based on any particular criteria, but were “entirely arbitrary” and “a fun way” to look back on the weird and wonderful discoveries of the year.
‘Black-souled’ Aphelandra
Despite this plant’s spectacular pink flowers and spikes of up to 110 flowers each, Kew Gardens ranked it just No. 3 on its top 10 list. Found in dry forests of northwest Colombia, it’s related to the zebra plant, a popular cultivated plant from Brazil. Like its relative, the new species, Aphelandra almanegra, “has a lot of potential as a house plant,” wrote Sebastian Kettley and Martin Cheek of Kew Gardens, who compiled the list. “Unfortunately, the clearance of its habitat means it is threatened with extinction.”
‘Eye of Sauron’ fish
The Natural History Museum’s list includes a number of interesting discoveries, including a vegetarian piranha called a pacu from the Xingu River in Brazil. The museum’s scientists were there to document freshwater animals, including some not yet discovered, that might be impacted by the construction of the controversial Belo Monte dam. Rupert Collins, a senior curator of fish at the museum, said one of the reasons such dam projects get the go-ahead is because the number of unique species that would be impacted is underestimated. “Basically, we don’t fully know what lives in these places,” he said. The new pacu has been named Myloplus sauron due to its resemblance to the Eye of Sauron, from Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Cadet’s clearwing moth
A girl named Daisy Cadet discovered this unusual moth in her living room in Port Talbot, Wales, and posted it on Instagram. One of her followers suggested getting in touch with a British charity called Butterfly Conservation, which connected her with the Natural History Museum. Some sleuthing eventually revealed that it had hatched from a fragment of a seed pod stuck in the boot of Cadet’s mom, Ashleigh, a professional photographer, when she flew home from an assignment in central Guyana. Mark Sterling, a Natural History Museum researcher, helped identify it as a clearwing moth and name the new species Carmenta brachyclados, announcing the discovery in October.
A fish that lives in a sponge
Scientists at the California Academy of Sciences, based in San Francisco, discovered 35 new fish in 2024, including this goby from Indonesian waters. While its close relatives are free-living fish that live on shallow sea floors less than 10 metres deep, the new species, Bathygobius mero, makes its home in a large barrel sponge in deeper waters, between nine and 30 metres below the surface.
World’s largest hummingbird
While big animals are often easier to spot than small ones, it took until 2024 to discover the southern giant hummingbird, the world’s largest. It turns out that a different species of giant hummingbird led scientists to the discovery. The known species, Patagona gigas, breeds along the Pacific coast of central Chile but disappears after the breeding season. Researchers at the University of New Mexico, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Centro de OrnitologÃa y Biodiversidad in Peru decided to track them by attaching mini GPS backpacks. They discovered that the birds fly high into the Andes, as far north as Peru. There, they hang out among an even bigger giant hummingbird, the new species, that lives at high altitudes year-round. The new species has been named Patagona chaski after the chaski messenger of the Inca empire.
New Andean glass frog
A green translucent frog with lavender eyes was among two new species of glass frog found in the southern Andes of Ecuador. Glass frogs are a group of amphibians whose hearts can be seen beating through their translucent bellies. The most widespread was thought to be Buckley’s glass frog, found across a large part of the tropical Andes. But new research published in August showed that what was thought to be one species was actually several, with distinct physical features, calls and genetics. One of the new species, pictured above, has been named the Marco Reyes’ glass frog, Centrolene marcoreyesi, after a late well-known herpetologist at the National Institute of Biodiversity of Ecuador.
Guianan long-nosed armadillo
The new species of 2024 include a number of mammals, including rats, mice and the first new species of armadillo in 30 years. Like Buckley’s glass frogs, nine-banded armadillos were thought to have a huge range. But genetic testing shows they’re actually four species, including one that is a bit bigger than the other three and lives in a part of northeastern South America called the Guiana Shield — the Guianan long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus guianensis.
New parasitoid wasp from Texas
While many of these new species were found in fairly exotic places, there are new creatures waiting to be discovered even in North American cities. A new wasp species, Chrysonotomyia susbelli, was found on the Rice University campus in Houston. “You don’t have to travel to a distant rainforest to find new and beautiful things — you just have to step outside and look,” Scott Egan, an associate professor of biosciences, said. The wasp was found inside galls, tumour-like growths, created by a gall wasp called Neuroterus bussae, on the leaves of southern live oak trees. It belongs to a group of parasitoid wasps, which prey on the larvae of other insects, but is the first of its genus known to target that kind of gall wasp.
