Natural History Museum describes over 550 new species in 2021

Natural History Museum describes over 550 new species in 2021 - Natural History Museum

Despite international travel to field sites or other museum collections having remained largely off limits this past year, the scientists and researchers at the Natural History Museum have continued their busy work in documenting the planet's life and geology.

Over the last 12 months, this has seen the researchers, curators and scientific associates describe 552 species new to science. The discovered species range across the entire tree of life, from some of the smallest invertebrates swimming in the oceans to ferocious predators that stalked the land millions of years ago.

The biggest and by far most fearsome new species to have been described this year are a pair of giant carnivorous dinosaurs known as spinosaurs. Discovered by PhD student Jeremy Lockwood on the Isle of Wight, the predators have been named the 'riverbank hunter' and 'hell heron' after the swampy environment they would once have lived and hunted in.

But the spinosaurs were just two of six new dinosaurs to have been described by Museum scientists, four of which were from the UK. These have included the truly bizarre Spicomellus afer, the earliest ankylosaur and first to have been found in Africa, Brighstoneus simmondsi, a new iguanodontian with an unusual snout also from the Isle of Wight, Pendraig milnerae, the earliest known carnivorous dinosaur from the UK, and Rhomaleopakhus turpanensis, a chunky sauropod from China.

two side by side images of two five petaled flwoers aginst dark green leaves, one flower is cerise pink the other a pale blush pink. — Impatiens versicolor. One of five new species of jewelweeds, or touch-me-nots, described from eastern Africa. (Credit: Fischer et al., 2021)

There have been a number of other new species from across the board, including five new species of plants from eastern Africa.

Known as jewelweeds or touch-me-nots, they usually produce delicate pink or white flowers, except for a few species which have switched to producing red flowers. This is because rather than being pollinated by butterflies the flowers are instead visited by birds, which find it easier to pick the colour red out from amongst green foliage.

With the world continuing to warm at an unprecedented rate it has never been more important to record what is currently alive and what has been here before, with every single species playing a crucial role in the functioning of our planet.

Another of the biggest science stories this year was when, during lockdown in February, a large chunk of space rock burnt through the atmosphere before coming to a sudden stop on a driveway in the Gloucestershire town of Winchcombe.

Hundreds of people spotted the fireball streaking across the night sky, and within a matter of hours researchers were able to get out and recover over 600 grams of the meteorite that had travelled billions of kilometres and reached over 1,6000C as it burnt through the atmosphere.