Each year, the International Institute for Species Exploration works with an expert panel to pick the top 10 species that received scientific names over the previous year.

Some of them may have been long familiar to local populations, while others have only recently come to light. "The Top 10 is a reminder of the wonders awaiting us," Quentin Wheeler, the institute's founding director, said in a news release.
The Top 10 new species for 2015 include Anzu wyliei, also known as "the Chicken From Hell." This 10-foot-tall birdlike dinosaur lived around 66 million years ago in the Dakotas.

In addition to the pufferfish, this year's lineup features a cartwheeling spider, a frog that gives birth to live tadpoles, and a sea slug with crazy colors.

The list highlights a small fraction of the approximately 18,000 new species found annually.

Almost two million plant and animal species have been named so far, and it's estimated that ten million more await discovery, Prensa Latina News Agency reported quoting Quentin Wheeler.

However, threats such as habitat loss, pollution, and poaching mean that many species are disappearing before we can identify them.

"I'm concerned that with the biodiversity crisis happening, we are losing species at least as fast as we are discovering them," says Wheeler.

"The importance of this list is that it draws attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct at an alarming rate."