Nature & Environment
A New Species Of Monkey Has Been Discovered
Brooke Miller
First Posted: Sep 13, 2012 08:18 AM EDT
A new species of African Monkey specie has been discovered in the remote forested part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The newly discovered specie is lesula that is formally named as Cercopithecus Lomamienis.
This is the second new species of African Monkey that is been discovered in the last 28 years.
It was in 2007 that the first lesula was found in a school director's compound in town of Opala. They noticed that the young monkey looked similar to the owl faced monkey, but its coloration was unlike that of any other known species.
The study is being carried the journal PLOS ONE paper.
This species cover a range of 6,500 square miles in the central DRC, and is being threatened by local bush meat hunting.
"The challenge for conservation now in Congo is to intervene before losses become definitive," say John and Terese Hart, who led the project. "Species with small ranges like the lesula can move from vulnerable to seriously endangered over the course of just a few years."
"This discovery may be only the first from this remarkable but poorly known forest, located in the central DRC [DR Congo]," said anthropologist Andrew Burrell from New York University who was also involved in the study and was quoted by BBC. "Recent surveys have shown that the forest also harbours okapi, bonobos and elephants, as well as 10 other primate species or subspecies."
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First Posted: Sep 13, 2012 08:18 AM EDT
A new species of African Monkey specie has been discovered in the remote forested part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The newly discovered specie is lesula that is formally named as Cercopithecus Lomamienis.
This is the second new species of African Monkey that is been discovered in the last 28 years.
It was in 2007 that the first lesula was found in a school director's compound in town of Opala. They noticed that the young monkey looked similar to the owl faced monkey, but its coloration was unlike that of any other known species.
The study is being carried the journal PLOS ONE paper.
This species cover a range of 6,500 square miles in the central DRC, and is being threatened by local bush meat hunting.
"The challenge for conservation now in Congo is to intervene before losses become definitive," say John and Terese Hart, who led the project. "Species with small ranges like the lesula can move from vulnerable to seriously endangered over the course of just a few years."
"This discovery may be only the first from this remarkable but poorly known forest, located in the central DRC [DR Congo]," said anthropologist Andrew Burrell from New York University who was also involved in the study and was quoted by BBC. "Recent surveys have shown that the forest also harbours okapi, bonobos and elephants, as well as 10 other primate species or subspecies."
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone