The discovery of a entirely new species of invertebrate from specimens taken in the 1980's and preserved in the museum archives is an astonishing find as most people would expect new species to be found out in the field instead of in a jar of formaldehyde. The mushroom shaped creatures formally named
Dendrogramma look similar to jellyfish but lack features that would place them it that group and all of what we currently know about them is taken from what was left of them and photos and notes taken back when they were retrieved.
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This find brings with it a interesting question, just how many yet to be identified species, could be hidden away stored in museum archives? Considering that it has been suggested that around 86% of earth's species are still yet to be identified
Click here for more information. It would be interesting to see just how many of those species could be hidden away in archives right under our noses.
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