A pink and purple snail believed to have gone extinct due to climate change has reappeared on the island nation of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.
Declared a lost species seven years ago, the Aldabra banded snail supposedly went extinct and had not been seen on the islands since 1997, the Associated Press reported.
"I was so surprised; no one (on the expedition) had ever seen the snail before," said Shane Brice, a junior skipper and part of the research team that discovered the specimens, as quoted by the AP. "It's quite amazing."
Seven of the comeback creatures were discovered on Aldabra atoll's Malabar Island last week by a research team from the Seychelles Islands Foundation.
"It shows that Aldabra has a lot of secrets still, and hopefully (we) will continue to find interesting things," foundation senior ranger Catherine Onezia said of the surprise find, as quoted by the AP.
Conservationists are thrilled by the rediscovery of the snail, which is native to the Aldabra coral atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. While the creature's disappearance doesn't seem to have a huge effect on the nearby ecosystem, every species has potential value scientists may not understand yet.
"Could we live without this little snail? Almost certainly," said Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecology professor at Duke University. "But we simply do not know what species are going to do for us in an economic sense. Probably from the time that somebody baked the first loaf of bread, a housewife said, 'I hate bread mold and I wish it would disappear forever.' And of course we know the scientific name of bread mold is penicillin."
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