The discovery provides another key data point about a little-known species for which every observation matters The first image of newly hatched California giant salamanders in the wild can teach biologists about the nesting habitat of the little-known species. NPS / Michael Reichmuth At first, they looked like fish. The cluster of one-inch-long, swimming creatures was tucked beneath rocks in frigid creek water. As National Park Service fisheries biologist Michael Reichmuth snorkeled slowly above them, he positioned his camera and snapped a photo. Reichmuth was surveying juvenile coho salmon —but these mysterious animals were something else. “I noticed external gills and tiny developing legs,” he tells Smithsonian magazine. “They were amphibians, but I didn’t know the species.” Once he found out what he was looking at, Reichmuth realized that his observation was much rarer than he thought, and it’s incredibly valuable to scientists.…