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.

The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae) was found hiding under a rock in central Barbados during an ecological survey in March.

I was making a joke and in my head I said, ‘I smell a threadsnake,'” Justin Springer, Caribbean program officer for the NGO Re:wild, recalled. “I just had a feeling, but I couldn’t be sure because we turned over a lot of rocks before that and we saw nothing.