Scientists rediscover Himalayan pangolin species overlooked since 1836

In 1836, a young British diplomat and naturalist named Brian Houghton Hodgson was stuck in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, far from Europe’s great museums but close to the forests and hills where strange animals still lived largely unseen. One day, he came across a creature that looked almost like a pangolin—and yet, not quite.It was covered in armor‑like scales from head to tail, just as the French zoologist Georges Cuvier had described for pangolins. But this animal had clearly visible external ears, and far more scales along its trunk than any known species. For Hodgson, then 35 and hungry for discovery, this wasn’t just a curiosity; it was a question: had he stumbled onto a new species, or was this just a peculiar individual?Convinced he was looking at something undescribed, he named it Manis auritus—“auritus” meaning “with large ears” in Latin.