Museum Collections Hide New Species

Reexamination of stored fossils in museums continues to produce valid new species — sometimes decades after excavation — because many specimens were collected but never fully analysed with modern methods. The Paludohadros proudlovii find from Surrey material curated by the Natural History Museum shows how curation, cataloguing, and PhD‑led reanalysis can reveal substantive additions to biodiversity and paleobiogeography. — This reframes museum funding and digitization as active scientific investments, not just heritage preservation, with consequences for research priorities, public engagement, and science policy.