Over the last 12 months our scientists have been busy collecting, studying and cataloguing the extraordinary diversity of life on Earth.

From the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the lush rainforests of Tanzania, they’ve given official names to an astonishing 262 new species. Among this year’s cohort are new toads and fish, forams and bryozoans, butterflies and bees, and a smattering of ancient sharks.

In the face of the unfolding planetary emergency the race is on to describe new animals and plants before it’s too late. The work of our scientists shows how much there still is to discover about the natural world.

Glittering butterflies

This year, our new species total is dominated by moths and butterflies, a group known collectively as Lepidoptera. In total, 81 new species of moths and butterflies were described, including a moth named for the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The most glamorous were the jewel butterflies in the genus Hypochrysops. Our scientific associate John Tennent co-authored a huge reassessment of this group, which includes some gorgeously iridescent species with metallic wings of blue, green and orange.

Many of these new butterflies are from the islands of southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. One species, Hypochrysops borneensis has strikingly orange wings dramatically boarded by thick black lines. It was found flitting high above the rainforest hilltops of Borneo in the mid-afternoon sunshine.

Some species are only known from single specimens. This includes Hypochrysops russelli, which was first collected in Papua New Guinea in 1969, but over the last 50 years its forest home has been significantly degraded. There are now questions about whether the species still survives in the wild.

Stories like these starkly highlight the importance of collections, such as those held at the Natural History Museum. Some of the specimens we care for represent the only known record that a species ever existed.

Incredible invertebrates

This year’s new butterflies and moths are joined by other invertebrates, including 24 beetles, four wasps, three flatworms, a fly, a bee, an ant and a scale insect.

Our scientists have also taken a deep dive into the oceans. They’ve been mapping and documenting the extraordinary life found 5,000 metres beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a region known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

This region is of intense interest for the minerals that litter the seafloor in the form of polymetallic nodules. One of the new species this year – a ghostly white coral with a fan-like fringe, now named Deltocyathus zoemetallicus – was found growing on these nodules.

The researchers also described three new species of polychaete worm living in the sediment surrounding the minerals.

Elsewhere in the oceans our scientists named eight new parasitic copepods, two amphipods and two crabs.

Hopping over to the highlands of eastern Africa, and three new tree toads that give birth to live young were named. These unusual amphibians in the genus Nectophrynoides were discovered by comparing the DNA to the body size and shapes of known species from Tanzania.

“These discoveries underscore the diversity of live-bearing toads, as well as the importance of protecting East Africa’s forests,” says our curator Dr Simon Loader, who helped name the new toads. “If we lose these forests, we will lose one of the most unusual forms of amphibian reproduction known.”

“Only by continuing to explore these poorly known areas and protecting them, can we gain a more complete picture of the diversity they harbour and ensure that it is around for future generations to study.”

Also this year, we have a new caecilian, which is a type of limbless amphibian, as well as three new geckos from the caves of Cambodia. Joining these vertebrates are four new fish from southern Africa’s Lake Malawi and Cunene River, and a new species of red-toothed shrew from China.

Several of this year’s new fossil species were originally discovered in the UK, including a sail-backed dinosaur from the Isle of Wight. Also from southern England were a new lizard-like animal that might be the first known fully tree-dwelling rhynchocephalian and a 37-million-year-old snake.

Our scientists have been dipping their toes into ancient oceans too. This year eight new species of fossil sharks have been named. This includes Pararhincodon torquis, which was found near Salisbury and Newhaven in southern England, but is a distant relative of the modern collared carpet sharks that live around Australia and southeast Asia.

A series of fossils from the Atlas Mountains has helped solve a 500-million-year-old mystery. Now named Atlascystis acantha, the new species is showing scientists understand how the starfish got its arms.

With the help of our scientists, the ocean’s prehistoric clean-up crew have swum into the spotlight. Joining this year’s new species are eight 100-million-year-old bone worms, whose burrows have been preserved in the fossilised bones of ancient marine reptiles.

Last but certainly not least, we have plants and fungi, such as a new 400-million-year-old fungus that’s helping researchers understand how plants first colonised the land. Thanks to species like this paving the way millions of years ago, we have our final new species – Solanum stellaticalycinum, a plant from the montane forests of central Peru.

The discovery and naming of new species is always exciting and helps us better understand the world we live in. Our incredible scientists are at the forefront of this work.

But with the ongoing biodiversity crisis, countless species – both those we’re aware of and those yet to be discovered – are being pushed closer to the edge. To prevent further declines, it’s vital that we continue to describe and name new species. Put simply, we can’t protect what we don’t know.