Imagine an anteater with a long, thick tail, huge, curling claws, and an armored body covered by overlapping, pinecone-like scales. What you get is a pangolin, a mid-sized mammal found only in Africa and Asia. The pangolins' scales make them unique, but these scales have become their undoing. Pangolins are poached for their scales, making them the most highly-trafficked mammals in the world and consequently, at high risk of extinction.
A new study in the journal Communications Biology reveals that an unrecognized species of Asian pangolin, Manis aurita, has been hiding in plain sight among the trees of Nepal and Northern India. It is a vital distinction that expands biologists' understanding of where each species is found and how they differ from each other. And it might be the key to helping prevent illegal poaching before it happens.
"We can't protect what we do not know, and now that we have confirmed that this other species of pangolin exists, we can use that information to help protect these endangered animals," says Anderson Feijó, the Negaunee Assistant Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum and co-corresponding author of the study.
"This finding marks the culmination of more than five years of research that began in Nepal, where we first documented evidence suggesting that Himalayan pangolins represented a distinct evolutionary lineage," says Narayan Koju, a researcher at the Nepal Engineering College at Pokhara University and the study's first author. "The confirmation of Manis aurita as a valid species demonstrates the importance of long-term research, international collaboration, and museum collections. Most importantly, it provides a strong scientific basis for conservation planning, wildlife forensics, and efforts to protect one of the world's most trafficked mammals from extinction."
In 2025, another group of scientists correctly declared that Chinese pangolins weren't all the same, and that what had long been considered one species was actually two: one that lives primarily in China, and another found in the foothills of the Himalayas, spreading across parts of Nepal, India, Bhutan, and Myanmar. The scientists gave the mountain species a new name: Manis indoburmanica, the Indo-Burmese pangolin.
However, when animals are given scientific names, the first name assigned to a species is the one that counts. Feijó and his colleagues were already in the midst of a decade-long analysis of the pangolin family tree, using both physical traits and DNA to back up their arguments of how many species of pangolin there are and how they're related to each other. They read about another pangolin species, Manis aurita, that had been described in 1836, and had been since downgraded to a subspecies of Chinese pangolin.
"This left us with a core taxonomic riddle: what is the relationship between indoburmanica and aurita? Are they the same species or different species?" says Kai He, another of the paper's co-corresponding authors and a researcher at the South China Biodiversity Research Center at Guangzhou University. "The ultimate, most thrilling piece of the puzzle came from the Natural History Museum in London. Thanks to their incredible expertise and assistance, the NHM team successfully sequenced the DNA directly from the historical type specimen of the Nepalese subspecies (aurita). This specimen dates back to 1836, making it nearly 190 years old."
The historic DNA from the museum collections provided the definitive proof: the modern specimens from the Himalayas matched aurita. That means that the species that had been described in 2025 as M. indoburmanica should actually be called M. aurita.
"This taxonomic clarification provides a crucial scientific basis for combating illegal poaching and lays the groundwork for protecting this cryptic endangered species," says Yan Hua, a co-corresponding author of the study and researcher at the Guangdong Academy of Forestry.
The differences between Himalayan pangolin M. aurita (briefly formerly known as M. indoburmanica) and the Chinese pangolin are subtle, but noteworthy.
"Compared to the Chinese pangolin, the Himalayan pangolin has a bigger body, a longer tail, and smaller ears," says Feijó. The newly resurrected species name, aurita, even refers to its distinct ears.
In addition to their physical differences, the two species also inhabit different geographical regions that do not overlap. For critically endangered animals, particularly ones targeted by poachers, a clear and detailed account of species varieties and their geographic distribution is vital to their protection.
In traditional Chinese medicine practices, pangolin scales are believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. As a result, illegal poaching poses an enormous threat to these animals. But putting a stop to poaching is no small task.
"In the marketplaces you basically only find pangolin scales, not the whole animals, which makes it hard to know which species are being hunted and where they are coming from," says Feijó. But the new DNA analyses from this study can help conservation scientists pinpoint the precise species of pangolins being poached. This means that conservationists can now work backwards using poached samples in illegal marketplaces to identify which species are being hunted and locate the geographical regions at high risk for poaching.
This information could be used to stop poachers in different regions, and also make sure that efforts to re-introduce pangolins to their previous ranges are focusing on the correct species. "Before, you might have introduced Chinese pangolins into Nepal, because you didn't know the difference," says Feijó. "By defining the differences between the species and the limits of where each species is found, we can make better conservation decisions."
According to the researchers, these real-world conservation applications could not have happened without museum collections, which contain pangolin specimens dating back more than a century.
"Using museum collections allows us to have access to more individuals across the species' range," says Feijó. "If you only rely on fresh material, since the animals are so rare to find in the wild, this greatly limits the information that you can gather. We used collections to have a more complete sampling of the species. It's a big advantage to have this resource available as a repository of material that we can look back and keep learning from."
This study was contributed to by scientists from the Guangzhou University, Nepal Engineering College, Pokhara University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Washington, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the University of Sevilla, the Guangdong Academy of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, Aspect Ecology Oxfordshire, the Chinese Wildlife Forensic Science Service, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the Field Museum.
