A team of scientists discovered a snail species that has shell height of 0.86 mm, the tiniest ever snail discovered.

The snail has been named as Angustopila dominikae. The snail that has been found by the scientist is an adult and it is as tiny as to fit through the head of needle and even smaller than the head of a match stick.

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Researchers could only find shells of the snails in a sample of soil at the base of a limestone cliff in Guangxi, just north of Vietnam and thus details about the species still remains a mystery.

"We hope that these results provide the taxonomic groundwork for future studies concerning the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrates," the researchers said Nature World News.

Scientists believe that they have similar diet and lifestyle as compared to cave-inhabiting small snails that feed on microorganisms like bacteria and fungal filaments. These snails are hermaphrodite and have both male and female reproductive organs. It changes its sex according to the climate and based on the sex of the other snails around.

In an interview for Newsweek, Adrienne Jochum, a researcher at Switzerland's University of Bern and Bern Natural History Museum, shared that the round shape of the shells of these new species may enable them to slip into tiny cracks in rocks to trap air bubbles in their shell and float in water when it rains.

She added that the tiny size of the snails is an evolutionary advantage to survive from predators as they miss these tiny snails in search of larger preys.

The shells of the snails are made of calcium carbonate and require limestone to provide calcium to their shells.

Barna Páll-Gergely, scientist from Shinshu university in Japan and co-author of the research said, "These are very probably extreme endemic species. If we find them in more than one locality that is somewhat surprising."

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