A beautiful deep brown coloured snake with a slight metallic sheen is sitting with its body in pleasingly looped curls on a rock.

Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, is named after actor and environmentalist Leonard DiCaprio ©Virender K. Bhardwaj

DiCaprio’s snake and Sauron’s piranha: Natural History Museum describes 190 new species in 2024

Author:: By Josh Davis
Date Published:: First published 20 December 2024
Date Last Updated:

Over the last 12 months our scientists have been describing a dizzying array of new species.

From dinosaurs that may have roamed like cattle along Britain’s ancient waterways to tiny diatoms ceaselessly producing oxygen in the warm waters off Australia’s northern beaches. It has been a year of incredible diversity.

Throughout 2024, our scientists have been hard at work describing new species from the depths of the oceans to remote rainforests and even from Welsh living rooms. Not to mention the discoveries they’ve made from specimens already in the collections we care for.

They’ve managed to describe and name an impressive 190 new species of animals, plants and minerals.

It’s never been more important to know what lives on our planet. Documenting the number of unique fish found in a river system can help inform infrastructure projects while understanding how ancient life responded to past climatic events can give us insight into how the current biodiversity crisis may unfold.

A small yellow bodied moth with a black tip to its tail and legs. It has see-though wings and long black antena. — Carmenta brachyclados, or Cadets' clearwing, is a new species of moth native to Guyana ©Mark Sterling

Put simply, we can’t protect what we don’t know. To create a world in which people and planet thrive we need to give all species a name to better inform policy, conservation and science.

A long way from home

One of the most unlikely new species described this year is the moth Carmenta brachyclados. Its unusual story started when it was discovered fluttering around a living room in south Wales. After much sleuthing, our scientists revealed that it’s actually a species native to the rainforests Guyana, South America, about 7,000 kilometres away.

This exciting discovery could easily have gone unnoticed, but luckily the person who found it was a young ecologist who posted a picture of the insect on Instagram. One of their followers was quick to point out the unusual nature of such a moth.

“This was a case where clearwing moth caterpillars in a fragment of seed pod got stuck to the boot of a professional photographer and got carried in an aeroplane to the UK,” explains Mark Sterling, a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum who helped identify and name the new moth.

“We have described this remarkable moth, which we know is from central Guyana, but the only specimens and other materials known in the world are from Port Talbot in South Wales.”

It’s joined on our new species list by 11 more moths, including two from Africa that are known to drink the tears of sleeping birds.

A large, light brown coloured preying mantis posed with its arms raised in the air. It looks almost exactly like a pile of dead brown leaves. — Deroplatys xuzhengfai is a species of preying mantis from the forests of Borneo ©Zhang et al. 2024

A little pill-shaped beetle with a black head and abdomen, chestnut coloured thorax and yellow-ish legs. — Microhoria melecisi is a new species of ant-mimic beetle from Crete ©A. Degiovanni

There are also around a dozen new species of beetles, 16 copepods and seven amphipods from the deep sea. A handful of snails have been described from India, along with a new centipede from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

A bryozoan specimen that looks almost like a honeycomb of layers of matter in a vague fan-like shape. — Kamchatkapora ozhgibesovi is a living species of bryozoan described from the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia ©Taylor et al. 2024

Whizzing over to the Atlantic Ocean, and two new species of pirate spiders were described from tiny St Helena. The Caribbean has also been found to be home to a several new species of golf ball sponges.

A year of bryozoans

Our scientists are not just focused on living things.

This year, a number of fossil species have been added to the ranks, with the most coming from a group of animals known as bryozoans. These are colonial animals a bit like corals, but that grow in a variety of forms and often over the top of other surfaces.

Of these new bryozoans, 50 come from a single rock formation in Australia dating to the Late Cretaceous. It makes them by far the most diverse fossil fauna known from Australasia from this time.

They’re accompanied by a fossil fungus from Yorkshire, a newly described fossil seed fern from Wales and an extinct wasp. There’s even a fossil poop – also known as a coprolite – called Alococopros milnei, which was named after author AA Milne in recognition of his tubby character, Winnie the Pooh.

But the biggest fossil find this year came from the Isle of Wight, as scientists named a new dinosaur from the island. This large herbivorous animal, known as Comptonatus chasei, is the most complete dinosaur fossil found in the UK in over a century.

The fossil bones of a large dinosaur laid out on the floor in the anatomically correct positions. — Comptonatus chasei is the most complete UK dinosaur discovered in a century ©Dinosaur Isle

A slab of rock, on which you can see the darker, curved branches of a plant. — Anisopteris shuteana is a fossil seed fern dating to 330 million years ago discovered in the Teilia Quarry, north Wales ©Hayes et al. 2024

At the other end of the country, from the Isle of Skye, researchers named a new species of pterosaur Ceoptera evansae.

“This particular group of pterosaurs is known largely from China,” explains Professor Paul Barrett, one of our dinosaur researchers who helped name the flying reptile. “And so, this is a range extension to another part of the world where we didn’t know that they’d existed before, filling in some of the gaps in the fossil record of these very difficult to preserve, fragile animals.”

There were another two dinosaurs this year, one was a sauropodomorph from Zimbabwe and a stegosaur from China. These join even more new fossil species, including spiders, a lizard-like reptile and a couple of mammals.

A very long, transluscent white fish photographed underwater on a brown leaf. You can see the pink gut of the fish through its skin. — Paravandelia luna is a type of candiru catfish, which usually parasitise other fish by swimming into their gill cavities ©Dr Elisabeth Henschel

Sauron’s piranha and DiCaprio’s snake

The fossil poop was not alone with getting a literary name. This year saw the description of two new vegetarian piranhas, or pacus. One was named Myloplus sauron due to its flame red fins and prominent black stripe which reminded researchers of the main antagonist in The Lord of the Rings.

The fish comes from the Xingu River in Brazil, but the building of a dam across the stretch of the water where the fish is found has put its future at risk. This highlights the critical need to keep describing new species.

“Potentially one of the reasons that these dam projects were given the go ahead was because the species diversity was grossly underestimated, and we didn’t know how many endemic species [found nowhere else] are found there,” explains Dr Rupert Collins, one of our curators of fish who helped describe the new pacus. “But since these projects have been launched, we’re finding that there’s probably upwards of 70 endemic species found in this very small region in the Xingu River.”

A large rat, with a long curved tail sitting on a rock. — Rattus ombirah is a new Moluccan rat that is only found on the Indonesian island of Obi ©Pierre-Henry Fabre

A a long snake-like caecilian is curled up on a bright green leaf. Its body is a vivid yellow, which fades to a grey head, and has a wet, shiny look to it. — Caecilia tesoro is one of two new caecilians described from the Tesoro Escondido Reserve, Ecuador ©Sarah Bock

“It’s a hugely biodiverse region and describing species, putting names on them, knowing their distributions, knowing how they differ from other species is really important for conservation and for understanding our natural world.”

Rupert was also involved with description of three new species of candiru catfish. Some species of these parasitic fish have the rather regrettable habit of swimming up the genitals of unsuspecting swimmers.

From the islands of Indonesia, our scientists helped to describe four new species of rats, and a new bat has been described from Kenya.

These are joined by a range of different reptiles and amphibians. There’s the two frogs from the remote tepuis – or table-top mountains – of Venezuela, as well as two limbless caecilians from Ecuador. There are also four new snakes, one of which was named Anguiculus dicaprioi, or DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake, after actor and environmentalist Leonard DiCaprio.

This year isn’t unique! Every day our scientists are doing the really important work of describing new species so we can make sure people and planet thrive. Check out previous years' new species round-ups below.

Discover more