Meet the 20,000 new species we discovered in a single year  The
latest State of Observed Species report is out. And biologists
might have just earned the title of Hardest-Working People in
Science, discovering a staggering 19,232 species in just one
year, including nearly 10,000 new types of insects.  To put that
in perspective, when Carl Linnaeus began his taxonomic
organization of all known species in the 1750s, there were only
10,000 known species. In 2009 alone — the most recent year the
report covers — scientists were able to discover twice that
number, and add significantly to the current tally of two
million known species. The species were discovered by a mix of
professional scientists and amateur species hunters, although
hopefully not "hunters" in the traditional sense, of course.
Meet the 20,000 new species we discovered in a single yearS
Unsurprisingly, insects and invertebrates made up the vast
majority of the newly discovered species, totaling 13,903
previously unknown species. Beetles were the