  We present the CoRoT light curve of the bright B2.5V star HD 48977 observed
during a short run of the mission in 2008, as well as a high-resolution
spectrum gathered with the HERMES spectrograph at the Mercator telescope. We
use several time series analysis tools to explore the nature of the variations
present in the light curve. We perform a detailed analysis of the spectrum of
the star to determine its fundamental parameters and its element abundances. We
find a large number of high-order g-modes, and one rotationally induced
frequency. We find stable low-amplitude frequencies in the p-mode regime as
well. We conclude that HD 48977 is a new Slowly Pulsating B star with
fundamental parameters found to be Teff = 20000 $\pm$ 1000 K and log(g)=4.2
$/pm$ 0.1. The element abundances are similar to those found for other B stars
in the solar neighbourhood. HD 48977 was observed during a short run of the
CoRoT satellite implying that the frequency precision is insufficient to
perform asteroseismic modelling of the star. Nevertheless, we show that a
longer time series of this star would be promising for such modelling. Our
present study contributes to a detailed mapping of the instability strips of B
stars in view of the dominance of g-mode pulsations in the star, several of
which occur in the gravito-inertial regime.
