Hidden in museum drawers for a century: two new bandicoot species

Sometimes a new species is not found in a jungle. It is found in a drawer. Over ten years, researchers examined hundreds of bandicoot specimens — rabbit-sized Australian marsupials — held in museum collections around the world, measuring skulls and sampling DNA from animals collected more than a century ago. Their study, published in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy, recognises two previously unrecognised species among the short-nosed bandicoots and redraws the map of the beloved quenda, whose range turns out to be broader than believed. Getting the family tree right is not bookkeeping: conservation money and protection follow species boundaries, and one relative, the southern brown bandicoot, now looks rarer — and more in need — than anyone knew.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: tech innovation