A New Sea Urchin Species was Discovered on eBay

Although it is a fairly well-known fact that eBay was founded so that the founder's wife could better organize her collection of Beanie Babies, Beanie Babies are by no means the only extremely rare items to have found their way onto the online auction site. One of the samples that stood out the most was a kind of sea urchin that had never been found previously.

Simon Coppard of the Natural History Museum's International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature gave the tiny, vibrant urchin the name Coelopleurus exquisitus. He frequently receives emails with images from people who have found sea urchins and are curious about them.But the eBay find was the first time he had ever discovered a completely new species and gotten to name it. However, given that 15,000 new organisms are discovered each year, there is always a chance that he or anyone else will discover something novel, even if it isn't on eBay.