Researchers in China have discovered the tiniest land snail yet measuring at just 0.86 mm in shell height from the base of limestone rocks in Guangxi Province, Southern China.

A team of researchers from Shinshu University and University and Natural History Museum of Bern discovered several minute empty light grey shells, which measured an astounding height of less than 1 mm. Out of all the samples, there was this one shell, now named Angustopila dominikae after the wife of the first author, which measured 0.86 mm in shell height.

The empty shell is considered to be perhaps the World’s smallest land snail species when focusing on the largest diameter of the shell. With very few reported instances of species demonstrating this degree of tininess, the team have described a total of seven new land snail species in their paper, published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

In the paper, Dr. Pall-Gergely and his team also discuss the challenges faced by scientists surveying small molluscs, since finding living specimens is still very difficult. Thus, the evolutionary relationships between these species, as well as the number of existing species are yet little known.

“Extremes in body size of organisms not only attract attention from the public, but also incite interest regarding their adaptation to their environment,” remind the researchers. “Investigating tiny-shelled land snails is important for assessing biodiversity and natural history as well as for establishing the foundation for studying the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrate animals.”

“We hope that these results provide the taxonomic groundwork for future studies concerning the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrates,” they finished up.

Páll-Gergely said he was excited to find the “really really tiny” snails and also added that these may probably be extreme endemic species and it is highly unlikely that they will be found in more than one locality.