There was an interesting news item this past Friday. Apparently, yet another monkey species has been discovered, this time in the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil. Or perhaps, a known species was simply rediscovered.
Professor Antonio Rossano Mendes Pontes scientists announced that he discovered the monkey in the vanishing rainforests of the country's northeast coast. The monkey is just over 30 inches from tip to tail and weighs slightly over 6 pounds. According to Pontes, his team identified approximately 30 individuals living in 500 acres of swampland.
Other biologists argue that the new species is merely a member of a species that had been discovered by a German scientist in the 18th Century and not seen since. The modern version has similar, but slightly different, markings, but some argue that this could be due to the age of the subject.
Part of the difficulty in identifying Pontes' monkey lies in the fact that he did not kill a specimen to deposit in a museum because of the small number of individuals. I guess this is a situation where the "bar code" system of classification could really come in handy. In the meantime, it feels good to know that a relatively large species could live in such a small area.
