A Portland State University researcher discovered that a rabbit known for centuries to exist in South America is different enough from its cousins to be its own unique species.
Ruedas made his discovery after studying rabbit specimens at the Naturalis museum in Leiden, in The Netherlands.
The specimens, collected in 1983 from the small country of Suriname on South America’s northeast coast, were labeled as South American cottontails.
The creature will be only the third new rabbit species named in South America since the start of the modern classification system 260 years ago.