A New Genus of African Monkey

A new species of monkey identified in Tanzania's highlands last year is an even more remarkable find than thought -- it is a new genus of animal.




The new monkey, at first called the highland mangabey but now known as kipunji, is more closely related to baboons than to mangabey monkeys, but in fact deserves its own genus and species classification, the researchers reported in the journal Science. So they have re-named it Rungwecebus kipunji, and it is the first new genus of a living primate from Africa to be identified in 83 years.

"This is exciting news because it shows that the age of discovery is by no means over," said William Stanley, mammal collection manager at The Field Museum in Chicago, which has a dead specimen of the grayish-brown monkey." Finding a new genus of the best-studied group of living mammals is a sobering reminder of how much we have to learn about our planet's biodiversity," added Link Olson of the University of Alaska Museum, who worked with Stanley and others on the paper.

Tim Davenport, lead author of the paper, who is from the Wildlife Conservation Society and is based in Tanzania, said: "We first came across the monkey a couple of years ago - the realization that it was a new species was really exciting.

"Since then we knew it would only be a matter of time before we got hold of a dead animal - because they are hunted - and once we had and we started looking at it more closely, we realized it was a new genus. That was just incredible - it is something that really doesn't happen that often." This is the first species discovery for monkeys since 1927, when Allen's swamp monkey was discovered.

“The discovery of a new primate species is an amazing event, but the discovery of a new genus makes this animal a true conservation celebrity,” said Davenport. “The scientific community has been waiting for eight decades for this to happen, and now we must we move fast to protect it.”

For more information about this discovery, read "A New Genus of African Monkey, Rungwecebus: Morphology, Ecology, and Molecular Phylogenetics" published in Science (11 May 2006).

The Wildlife Conservation Society has set up a website dedicated to the protection of the species:http://www.kipunji.org.

Photo credit: A Rungwecebus kipunji (Tim Davenport/WCS)