Researchers in the Northern Territory believe they have found a new marsupial species, and the process of identifying it could take them all the way to the British Museum.

The undescribed species of glider was first captured for analysis in the Northern Territory by researchers at Charles Darwin University, and is an animal Australia knows little about.

Something new: Professor Sue Carthew says there is much work to do before the glider species can be identified. Credit:Glenn Campbell

"We made our first sighting in Kakadu in October 2013," said Professor Sue Carthew, lead researcher on the Northern Glider Project.

"It used to be thought sugar gliders occurred across the Top End, all along the Eastern Seaboard and New Guinea. But we have genotyped gliders from a whole range of areas and found that the northern Australian gliders are quite different."