While the previous record holder for the smallest snail species in the world was announced roughly a month ago, there’s already a new tiny king in town: the newly discovered Acmella nana.
The world’s smallest snail, Acmella nana, was discovered by a team of Malaysian and Dutch biologists on the island of Borneo – in Malaysian Borneo to be exact.
Previously, the title of tiniest snail on the planet was held by the Chinese Angustopila dominikae — the shell of which measuring a mere 0.80 millimeters across and 0.89 millimeters in height.
The new king of the tiny snails was reported in the open-access journal ZooKeys by the team of biologists behind its discovery.
In addition to the discovery of the new miniature snail, the team also discovered another 47 new species which, according to a release on EurekAlert, vary greatly in size.
While some of the recently reported 48 new species have been known by researchers for decades, nobody had taken the time to bother naming them until now. But while some were known and for that matter, fairly commonplace in Borneo, others were undoubtedly new discoveries as they were found in rare vegetation types and on top of mountains like the more than 13,400-foot-tall Mount Kinabalu.
Study co-author Menno Schilthuizen was quoted by EurekAlert as having said that the entire population of Diplommatina tylocheilos, which only lives at the entrance of a hardly accessible cave in Mount Trusmadi, could be wiped out by a “blazing forest fire at Loloposon Cave” — the cave they call home.
Earlier this year, researchers discovered the smallest frogs in the world while exploring the southern Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest’s mountainous areas.
