New Species: An Ecuadoran Snail, Found in Museum

A new snail species, P. cecepeus, has literally been uncovered in the dusty coffers of a museum, a release said.

That museum is Madrid's National Museum of Natural Sciences, and the snail was there among numerous other snail specimens since around 1869. Drs. Abraham Breure and Rafael Araujo recently published their research on the new mollusk in the journal ZooKeys.

The snail, described as having a fairly small size, irregular shape and narrow reddish-brown streaks that run vertically along its shell, and being rather glossy and light chestnut-brown in color, was collected in the Scientific Commission of the Pacific, a late-19th century expedition in South America. All in all, 20 new snail species were collected then and described in the Journal of Conchyliologie, the release noted.

While the snail has been identified as from Ecuador, researchers say that additional field work should be done to determine the precise home of this particular mollusk, said the release.

"Although description of new species that have remained unnoticed for more than a century remains a rare event, it highlights the need for revisions of museum collections and especially the historical parts of these," concluded the researchers in the release.

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