• xylol@leminal.space
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    4 days ago

    Curious is it would be better worded by saying it is newly discovered species vs a new species discovered?

    Like by having new in front of species makes it seem the species is brand new vs being there a long time but just not discovered until now

    • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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      3 days ago

      I would think it doesn’t really matter. A “species” isn’t a true characteristic of the world, it is rather the concept we develop in order to differentiate one type of organism from others. In so far the species in this example is brand new, because we didn’t know a type of organism like that could exist. And frequently a species might be split up into two or more species. The real world isn’t changing, we just update our understanding of it to better match what we observe.