Sixty new species discovered in Suriname rainforest

Braving perilous river rapids in Suriname's rainforest, international scientists believe they have discovered 60 new species, including six frogs and 11 fish, a US-based conservation group said.

Trond Larsen, a tropical ecologist with the nonprofit research and advocacy organisation Conservation International, said on Thursday that the team catalogued creatures and studied freshwater resources during a three-week expedition in pristine forest in southeastern Suriname near the border with Brazil.

The upper Palumeu River watershed is among the world's most remote and least explored rainforests, the group, based in the US state of Virginia, said. It has worked for years in Suriname, a sparsely populated country on the northern shoulder of South America.

The creatures that could be new to science include a brown tree frog dubbed the "cocoa frog" and a type of poison dart frog, which secretes powerful toxins employed by local people for hunting.

"Given the rate at which so many populations of frogs are declining and disappearing around the world, it's pretty exciting to be discovering new species," Larsen said.

Scientists also catalogued a potentially new type of colourful tetra fish, an unusually pigmented catfish and nine other types of fish after dragging nets through waterways. The research team collected data on 1,378 species of plants, birds, mammals, insects, fish and amphibians.