About Japanese grammar

イギリスなどの研究グループは、インドネシアのスマトラ島の森で、新しい種類のオランウータンが見つかったと発表しました。


I would like to know the function of と here in the above sentence. As far as I know, と is used for combining nouns and referring to the object "with". As the と is used after a verb, then it must be something else. Thankss for helping.

と is also used for quotations.

Firas is right. You might have heard about と言いました。As 発表するis simply a more educated way to say 言うyou can use the とbefore 発表as well.

Thank you very much for helping out:D