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:
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)