A new mammal species was hiding in museum drawers for over a century
In 2013, Smithsonian zoologist Kristofer Helgen announced a new carnivore species, the olinguito, after a decade spent examining museum specimens and realising some had been wrongly filed under a known species, the olingo, despite a smaller skull and teeth and a different cloud-forest habitat in Ecuador and Colombia. It was the first new carnivore species described in the Americas in 35 years. Unlike most newly discovered species, it was never especially rare, just overlooked.