A lawsuit to protect the snail darter from the Tellico Dam in Tennessee offered the first real test of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. But a new study disputes the fish's status as a distinct species

A team of ecologists, evolutionary biologists and resource managers affiliated with several institutions across the U.S. has found that the snail darter, which was famously used by environmentalists in the 1970s to block construction of a damn,

Scientists say the snail darter, whose endangered species status delayed the building of a dam in Tennessee in the 1970s, is a genetic match of a different fish.