MEXICO: The record for the world’s tiniest land snail didn’t last long; the previous record-holder, found in China a month ago, has been surpassed by the discovery an even smaller creature from Borneo, researchers have announced.
Among 48 new species of snails discovered in Malaysian Borneo was Acmella nana (from the Latin “nanus” for “dwarf), a species with a shell just 0.5 millimeters wide.
That makes the previous record-holder, Angustilia dominikae, seem almost giant in comparison at 0.8 millimeters wide.
Researchers have announced Acmella nana and the other 47 news species in a study appearing in the journal ZooKeys.
The snail is so tiny, a microscope was needed to see it in the wild, the researchers say.
However, they knew where to look, they said; snails prefer to inhabit the limestone hills of Borneo, probably because they create their shells out of calcium carbonate, the major material in limestone.
“When we go to a limestone hill, we just bring some strong plastic bags, and we collect a lot of soil and litter and dirt from underneath the limestone cliffs,” explains Menno Schilthuizen, professor of evolution from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
After sieving the material down to a certain size, they dump it into a bucket full of water.
