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The mosquitoes are ferocious at Jenaro Herrera research station in the Amazon rainforest of northeastern Peru.

For Robert Voss, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, the long-sleeve khaki jungle uniform is the first line of defence. A specialist in South American mammal evolution, he is biology’s Indiana Jones, except instead of a bullwhip he carries a machete.

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He has come to western Amazonia, a jungle area just east of the Andean mountains that is home to the highest number of species for most groups of plants and animals on earth. And it is here he will become one of the first humans to ever lay eyes on a bizarre, gecko-like bat previously unknown to science.

In an age where biologists have mostly turned to discovering new species by splitting DNA in a lab, Mr. Voss is an echo of a bygone era: A scientist in the vein of biological giants such as Charles Darwin who made their discoveries by eschewing the comforts of the lab and venturing into the jungle. This is a story of scientific discovery in its purist form.