Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Montana first encountered the new species while conducting a genetic inventory of fish found in the upper Columbia River basin, said Young, also an agency fisheries biologist. At first, researchers were not sure they had stumbled on a never-before-seen fish. But genetic testing and examination of key physical differences proved that the specimens in question found in the Coeur d'Alene and St. Joe rivers in northern Idaho and in a stretch of the Clark Fork River in neighboring Montana were distinct from known varieties of the bottom-feeding fishes. The fish has been named the cedar sculpin, after Western red cedars that line streams in the Idaho panhandle where it was first discovered.