Discovery
It first came to the attention of scientists in 1996 when Rócio Rodiles-Hernández, a Mexican ichthyologist conducting a biotic survey on the river, collected the first specimens from the Chiapas-Guatemala border. Unable to identify the species, Rodiles involved two American catfish specialists, Dean A. Hendrickson of the University of Texas at Austin and John G. Lundberg of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadlephia. A detailed comparative morphological study employing high resolution, three-dimensional CT-scan imagery of the fish's anatomy revealed a number of distinctive characteristics unique to this species and the absence of characters needed to place this fish in any existing catfish family. In a 2005 publication these three ichthyologists with Julian M. Humphries of the University of Texas described this fish as a new species, genus and family of catfish.
Read more about this topic: Chiapas Catfish
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
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—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)