No one had spotted the world’s smallest known snake for nearly two decades. Some scientists worried that maybe the Barbados threadsnake had become extinct.

A snake believed to be extinct for nearly two decades and small enough to be mistaken for a worm has been rediscovered in

For nearly two decades, no one had spotted the world’s smallest-known snake. “After a year of searching, you begin to get a little pessimistic,” said Blades, project officer with the Ministry of Environment in Barbados. The snake can fit comfortably on a coin, so it was able to elude scientists for almost 20 years.