BEIJING - A group of international scientists working with the Beijing Spectrometer III (BES III) on Tuesday announced that they may have detected a new subatomic particle.

The new finding, referred to by the scientists as Zc(3900) for the time being, is likely to be a new exotic hadron, or a subatomic particle that does not fit into simple subatomic models, according to scientists working with the BES III, the main detector for the upgraded Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC II).

"One of the goals for the BES III experiments is to search for new exotic hadrons that don't fit into the traditional model for quarks," said Shen Xiaoyan, spokesperson for the scientists.

Almost 300 scientists from 11 nations have been taking part in the BES III experiments.

In 1988, the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider, China's first high-energy accelerator, completed its first successful collision. Its performance has improved since a 2008 upgrade.

The BES III scientists will continue to look for and study Zc(3900) and other new particles, according to Wang Yifang, director of the High-Energy Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.