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...(many more being discovered each year).

Discovery of new species bucks extinction trend
20 May 2005 09:41

Just as 1300 scientists from 90 nations warn of looming extinction in the animal world, a small team of biologists has discovered a species of African monkey.

The highland mangabey -- Lophocebus kipunji -- was spotted by Wildlife Conservation Society biologists on the flanks of Mount Rungwe, a 3 500m volcano in Tanzania. It is brown, about 3ft long, with an erect crest of hair on its head. It has elongated cheek whiskers and an unusual call. It is also rare: the total population could be less than 1 000.

"This demonstrates again how little we know about our closest living relatives," said Russell Mittermeier of the IUCN-World Conservation Union's species survival commission. "A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has hidden under our noses."

There are about 4,000 mammals on the planet. Scientists in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned yesterday that more than a fifth of all mammals, a third of all amphibians and a quarter of the world's coniferous trees are threatened.

But paradoxically, zoologists and ornithologists keep discovering species or rediscovering others thought to have gone into oblivion. In the last few weeks a hitherto unsuspected rodent appeared in Laos and US ornithologists announced the rediscovery of a giant woodpecker, thought to have vanished decades ago, in Arkansas.

A patch of forest in Vietnam has in the last 20 years or so produced a new species of ox, a new kind of deer, and a pheasant thought extinct since 1928.

The Laotian woods revealed a strange new species of striped rabbit. Between 1937 and 1994, 16 species of large mammal were discovered, including six varieties of whale.

The new mangabey -- reported in Science today -- was first spotted by research biologists keen to conserve another species of mangabey, and seen again by second team of conservationists. The little primate's hold on survival might be precarious.

One part of its range is severely degraded by illegal logging. "Clearly this remarkable discovery shows that there are still wild places where humans are not yet the dominant species," said John Robinson of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Kebab meat rodent a new species
From correspondents in Paris
May 19, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse

AN odd-looking rodent, spotted in a Laotian food market where it was going to be turned into a kebab, has turned out to be not only a new species but also the first member of a new family of mammals to be identified in more than three decades.

The creature's official title is stone-dwelling puzzle-mouse and it has been honoured with the Latin name Laonastes aenigmamus.

Less poetically, it is being called a rock rat, or "kha-nyou" to local Laotians.

"(It) looks something like a cross between a large dark rat and a squirrel, but is actually more closely related to guinea pigs and chinchillas," the British weekly magazine New Scientist reports.

The rodent has long whiskers with a thicky, furry tail, large paws, stubby limbs and is around 40cm long.

The discovery was made by Robert Timmins, a member of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, who spotted a dead rock rat as it was about to be grilled as a kebab.

"It was for sale on a table next to some vegetables," said Mr Timmins. "I knew it was something I had never seen before."

Mr Timmins and colleagues subsequently found the animal in rocky limestone outcrops in the Khammouan National Biodiversity Conservation Area in central Laos, but they have never seen it alive.

The discovery is "a major zoological find", New Scientist says.

New rodent species are discovered at the rate of one every year or so.

But what makes the rock-rat special is that it is the first member of a whole new family of mammals, now called Laonastidae.

The last time this happened was in 1974, when the bumblebee bat was discovered.

"To find something so distinct in this day and age is just extraordinary. For all we know, this could be the last remaining mammal family left to be discovered," Mr Timmins told New Scientist.

The report appears in next Saturday's issue of the magazine. The full study appears in a specialist British journal, Systematics and Biodiversity.

Taxonomy classifies living creatures according to progressively narrower definitions: Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and, finally, species.