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:
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)