South America - Artensterben

Extremely rare species: northern sportive lemur, Devils Hole pupfish, and cherry-throated tanager (© Wikimedia Commons – Lemur: Edward E. Louis, Jr, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Fish: Olin Feuerbacher, Public Domain / Bird: Jens Bokelaar, CC BY-SA 4.0)

7. April 2026 Doreen Fräßdorf

Which animals are threatened with extinction? These 8 species have fewer than 100 individuals

Species extinction is rarely an abrupt event. In many cases, the decline stretches over decades until only small, isolated remnant populations remain. Some of these species now survive with fewer than 100 individuals worldwide. Such extremely small populations are especially vulnerable to chance events, genetic impoverishment, and ongoing habitat loss.

Wiederentdeckung von Anolis laevis in der Region San Martín in Peru

The Río Huallaga in the San Martín region in northeastern Peru. The smooth or swordsman anole (Anolis laevis) was rediscovered in the surrounding montane forests of this river system—a habitat now under severe pressure from deforestation and settlement. (© Josue Hermoza, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

31. March 2026 Doreen Fräßdorf

Peru: Lizard with nose extension rediscovered after more than 150 years – Anolis laevis

In 1876, the American naturalist Edward Drinker Cope described a small lizard from the montane forests of northeastern Peru. What stood out most was an unusual appendage at the tip of its snout—a feature that set it apart from most other species. Cope originally described the species under a different

Illustration of the Floreana giant tortoise — once one of the most distinctive giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, today probably extinct in its original form.

16. March 2026 Doreen Fräßdorf

Floreana giant tortoise: From extinction to return

A subspecies of the Galapagos tortoise When the Floreana giant tortoise was still alive, it was part of the extraordinary tortoise fauna of the Galapagos Islands. Hardly anywhere else on Earth did a comparable diversity of giant land tortoises evolve—adapted to different islands, volcanoes, climate zones, and food resources. Today,

Wiederentdeckung: Killifisch Moema claudiae

Tiny, vividly colored and almost lost: Moema claudiae — shown here as a male (top, 3.8 cm) and a female (bottom, 3.6 cm) — was rediscovered in 2024 after more than 20 years. This killifish species grows to only about four centimeters and survives in temporary rainy-season pools of the Bolivian Amazon region. (© Drawert & Litz (2025), Nature Conservation, CC BY 4.0)

17. November 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

“Lost Beauty”: Fish thought extinct rediscovered after 20 years

When researchers examined an inconspicuous, shallow pond on the edge of a remote remnant forest in Bolivia in spring 2024, they had no idea that right there—beneath leaves, gray mud and surrounded by vast agricultural land—they would find a species many already believed to be extinct: Moema claudiae, a seasonal

rediscovered in Peru: Sira barbet and Peruvian solitaire

The Sira barbet, which had not been documented for twelve years, was tracked down during an expedition in July 2024. Its striking red breast band and contrasting plumage make it an unmistakable inhabitant of Peru’s Sira Mountains. (© Michael G. Harvey/Cornell University, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

6. February 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

Two lost birds rediscovered in Peru: Sira barbet and Peruvian solitaire

The Search for Lost Birds project has set itself the task of tracking down “lost” bird species that have not been documented in the wild for more than a decade. These species—without recent genetic or photographic evidence and without ex situ populations—are often considered lost to science. According to a

Regenfrosch Atelopus longirostris - 2015 wiederentdeckt

The longnose stubfoot toad (Atelopus longirostris) was also rediscovered in Ecuador in 2015 after being missing for 30 years. (© Luis Aurelio Coloma, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

19. September 2024 Doreen Fräßdorf

Pristimantis ruidus: Frog Species Missing for 100 Years Rediscovered in Ecuador

During a 2022 expedition to the Molleturo forest in the Ecuadorian Andes, biologist Juan Sánchez-Nivicela and his team made a remarkable discovery: two tiny frogs that could not be immediately identified. Now, as the researchers report in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution, the frogs belong to the species Pristimantis ruidus,

Neu entdeckte Tiere 2023: Krokodilsmolch Tylototriton ngoclinhensis

The species name ngoclinhensis refers to the type locality of the newly discovered Ngoc Linh crocodile newt (Tylototriton ngoclinhensis): Ngoc Linh Mountain in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. (© Phung TM, Pham CT, Nguyen TQ, Ninh HT, Nguyen HQ, Bernardes M, Le ST, Ziegler T, Nguyen TT (2023) Southbound – the southernmost record of Tylototriton (Amphibia, Caudata, Salamandridae) from the Central Highlands of Vietnam represents a new species. ZooKeys 1168: 193-218.)

9. November 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Newly discovered animals 2023

It is said that between 11,000 and 58,000 animal and plant species irreversibly go extinct each year, but there is also good news: around 18,000 new species are described and named by taxonomists each year; this number includes extinct or fossilized organisms, as well as bacteria and viruses. Even in

For a beetle from the rove beetle family (Staphylinidae), Darwin's rove beetle is large at around two centimeters in body length. Its head and pronotum shine metallic blue-green. The wing covers, mouthparts, legs and abdomen of Darwin's rove beetle are brown. (© Natural History Museum: Coleoptera Section from South Kensingon, London, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

19. November 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Darwin’s Rove Beetle

A chance find gave it its own name On August 24, 1832, the HMS Beagle anchored in Bahía Blanca Province in eastern Argentina. On board the ship: the then 23-year-old British naturalist Charles Darwin. During the voyage he collected rock samples, plants, marine animals and a great many beetles. He

The Subantarctic rayadito, described as a new bird species in August 2022 from the Diego Ramírez archipelago, differs visually, behaviorally, and genetically from its mainland relatives. (© Rozzi, R., Quilodrán, C.S., Botero-Delgadillo, E. et al., via Wikimedia Commons)

3. September 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

New bird species discovered on treeless archipelago

About 100 kilometers south of Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America, lie the one-square-kilometer Diego Ramírez Islands. They are home to the Subantarctic rayadito (Aphrastura subantarctica), which until recently was thought to be the thorn-tailed rayadito (Aphrastura spinicauda), a species widespread in Chile and adjacent regions. A clue

A+D: Megadytes ducalis (Brazilian diving beetle), B+E: M. lherminieri, C+F: M. magnus (© L. Hendrich, M. Manuel, M. Balke: The Return of the Duke, Vol. 4586 No. 3: 18 Apr. 2019, Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

24. December 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Brazilian diving beetle

“Giant of the Dytiscidae” Until recently, the Brazilian diving beetle Megadytes ducalis was known only from a single male specimen, which, according to rumors, was discovered before 1882 at the bottom of a water-filled canoe in the Amazon region of Brazil. It is currently housed at the Natural History Museum