New species found while cleaning out freezer. See ‘unusual’ creature from Maldives
In the picturesque waters of the Maldives, a diver in 2016 noticed something in the water column.
It was swimming alone about 30 feet below the surface, its elongated body moving with the flows of the ocean.
The diver captured the animal in a plastic container before preserving it and putting it into a freezer at the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, where it was forgotten.
Now, researchers rediscovered the sample — and realized it’s a new species.
“The material described herein was found during a freezer clean up: in a pudding of old ice and forgotten Eppendorf tubes, a vial with an unusual animal was recovered,” researchers said in a March 26 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
The “lost and found” animal was a marine worm called a polychaete, according to the study.
However, a few key features set the worm apart from previously described species.
The holotype, or primary specimen used to describe the species, was a female and had 32 chaetigers, or the fleshy appendages lining the center structure of the body, according to the study.
The worm was “relatively large and long” compared to other species in the genus, researchers said, reaching a total length of about half an inch.
Its “slender” body came to a head with “well-developed” eyes protruding forward and a “mouth surrounded by cushion-shaped lips,” according to the study.
The once-frozen animal was “transparent whitish with (an) opaque mass of eggs filling (its) body,” researchers said. The outside of its body had “reddish brown spots” on most of its trunk.
The new species was named Ctenophoricola tzetlini, or the Tzetlin polychaete, honoring professor Alexander Tzetlin and “his contribution to the study of annelid morphology and evolution, and for his incredible ability to share his worm-loving attitude through (the) years,” researchers said.
Polychaetes are divided into two groups: free-moving and tube-dwelling, according to Britannica.
Some species are predatory, while others act as parasites, researchers said, depending on where the animals spend their lives.
The Tzetlin polychaete was caught in the south Maldives, part of an island chain in the northern Indian Ocean just south of India.
The research team included Vitaly Syomin, Glafira Kolbasova, Maya Semenova and Tatiana Neretina.
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 1:37 PM with the headline "New species found while cleaning out freezer. See ‘unusual’ creature from Maldives."
