In this photo taken in 2006 and released on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008, by U.S. scientist S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State University, the globe's tiniest snake is shown curled up on a U.S. quarter. Hedges said Sunday he has discovered the globe's tiniest species of snake in the easternmost Caribbean island of Barbados, with full-grown adults typically less than four inches (10 centimeters) long. He named the diminutive snake 'Leptotyphlops carlae' after his herpetologist wife, Carla Ann Hass.

Hedges has discovered and described more than 65 new species of amphibians and reptiles throughout the Caribbean in the course of his genetic and evolutionary studies. He and his colleagues also are the discoverers of the world's smallest frog and lizard species, which also were found on Caribbean islands.

(AP Photo/Penn State University, S. Blair Hedges)