Rhinogradentia

Steiner also created a fictional persona, naturalist Harald Stümpke, who is credited as author of the 1961 book Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia (translated into English in 1967 as The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades).

According to Steiner, it is the only remaining record of the animals, which were wiped out, along with all the world's Rhinogradentia researchers, when the small Pacific archipelago they inhabited sank into the ocean due to nearby atomic bomb testing.

[3][2] Steiner's fictional author, credited as "quondam curator of the Museum of the Darwin Institute of Hy-yi-yi, Mairuwili", provides a very detailed account of the order and individual species, written in a dry, scholarly tone.

[5] The evidently expert voice of the author, his competent writing, and apparent familiarity with conventions of academic literature set the work apart as a rare example at the intersection of fiction and scholarship.

[7] According to Stümpke, Rhinogradentia were native to Hy-yi-yi, a small Pacific archipelago comprising eighteen islands: Annoorussawubbissy, Awkoavussa, Hiddudify, Koavussa, Lowlukha, Lownunnoia, Mara, Miroovilly, Mittuddinna, Naty, Nawissy, Noorubbissy, Osovitissy, Ownavussa, Owsuddowsa, Shanelukha, Towteng-Awko, and Vinsy.

[8] In the late 1950s, nearby nuclear weapons testing by the United States military accidentally caused all of the islands of Hy-yi-yi to sink into the ocean, destroying all traces of the rhinogrades and their unique ecosystem.

All the 14 families and 189 known snouter species descended from a small shrew-like animal, which gradually evolved and diversified to fill most of the ecological niches in the archipelago — from tiny worm-like beings to large herbivores and predators.

[5] Since the book's original publication several scientists and publishers have written about Rhinogradentia as though Steiner's account were true, though it is unclear how many of those who continued and popularized the joke did so intentionally.

[9] Timothy E. Lawlor's widely read textbook Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals includes an entry for Rhinogradentia that does not acknowledge its fictional nature.

[13][21] One reader, entomologist Alice Gray, expressed thanks for the article, which enabled her family to identify an animal-shaped metal bracelet from the South Pacific as having been modeled after a "Hoop Snouter", and included a drawing to preserve the record because, she said, it had been melted down with some toy soldiers and a spoon by a young cousin with a new casting set.

[5] On April Fools' Day in 2012, the National Museum of Natural History in France announced the discovery of a wood-eating termite-like genus, Nasoperferator, with a rotating nose resembling a drill.

The National Museum of Natural History's Nasoperferator announcement was accompanied by a two-month exhibit honoring the animals, featuring purported stuffed specimens in its gallery of extinct species.