New South American mammal discovery

This video is called Olinguito: Smithsonian announces discovery of new species in the raccoon family, called olinguito.

From Wildlife Extra:

First new species of carnivore in western hemisphere discovered for 35 years

Has appeared unrecognised in museums and even zoos!

August 2013. Observed in the wild, tucked away in museum collections, and even exhibited in zoos around the world-there is one mysterious creature that has been a victim of mistaken identity for more than 100 years. A team of Smithsonian scientists, however, uncovered overlooked museum specimens of this remarkable animal, which took them on a journey from museum cabinets in Chicago to cloud forests in South America to genetics labs in Washington, D.C. The result: the olinguito (Bassaricyon neblina) – the first carnivore species to be discovered in the American continents in 35 years.

Related to raccoons and coatis

The olinguito is the latest scientifically documented member of the family Procyonidae, which it shares with raccoons, coatis, kinkajous and olingos. The 2-pound olinguito, with its large eyes and woolly orange-brown fur, is native to the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador, as its scientific name, “neblina” (Spanish for “fog”), hints. In addition to being the latest described member of its family, another distinction the olinguito holds is that it is the newest species in the order Carnivora-an incredibly rare discovery in the 21st century.

“The discovery of the olinguito shows us that the world is not yet completely explored, its most basic secrets not yet revealed,” said Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and leader of the team reporting the new discovery. “If new carnivores can still be found, what other surprises await us? So many of the world’s species are not yet known to science. Documenting them is the first step toward understanding the full richness and diversity of life on Earth.”

Olingo research turned up a surprise

Discovering a new species of carnivore, however, does not happen overnight. This one took a decade, and was not the project’s original goal-completing the first comprehensive study of olingos, several species of tree-living carnivores in the genus Bassaricyon, was. Helgen’s team wanted to understand how many olingo species should be recognized and how these species are distributed-issues that had long been unclear to scientists. Unexpectedly, the team’s close examination of more than 95 percent of the world’s olingo specimens in museums, along with DNA testing and the review of historic field data, revealed existence of the olinguito, a previously undescribed species.

Lives in the Andes

The first clue came to Helgen from the olinguito’s teeth and skull, which were smaller and differently shaped than those of olingos. Examining museum skins revealed that this new species was also smaller overall with a longer and denser coat; field records showed that it occurred in a unique area of the northern Andes Mountains at 5,000 to 9,000 feet above sea level-elevations much higher than the known species of olingo. This information, however, was coming from overlooked olinguito specimens collected in the early 20th century. The question Helgen and his team wanted to answer next was: Does the olinguito still exist in the wild?

To answer that question, Helgen called on Roland Kays, director of the Biodiversity and Earth Observation Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, to help organize a field expedition.

Nocturnal fruitarian

The team had a lucky break that started with a camcorder video. With confirmation of the olinguito’s existence via a few seconds of grainy video shot by their colleague Miguel Pinto, a zoologist in Ecuador, Helgen and Kays set off on a three-week expedition to find the animal themselves. Working with Pinto, they found olinguitos in a forest on the western slopes of the Andes, and spent their days documenting what they could about the animal-its characteristics and its forest home. Because the olinguito was new to science, it was imperative for the scientists to record every aspect of the animal. They learned that the olinguito is mostly active at night, is mainly a fruit eater, rarely comes out of the trees and has one baby at a time.

Cloud forest

In addition to body features and behaviour, the team made special note of the olinguito’s cloud forest Andean habitat, which is under heavy pressure of human development. The team estimated that 42 percent of historic olinguito habitat has already been converted to agriculture or urban areas.

“The cloud forests of the Andes are a world unto themselves, filled with many species found nowhere else, many of them threatened or endangered,” Helgen said. “We hope that the olinguito can serve as an ambassador species for the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia, to bring the world’s attention to these critical habitats.”

Has appeared in museums and zoos

While the olinguito is new to science, it is not a stranger to people. People have been living in or near the olinguito’s cloud forest world for thousands of years. And while misidentified, specimens have been in museums for more than 100 years, and at least one olinguito from Colombia was exhibited in several zoos in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. There were even several occasions during the past century when the olinguito came close to being discovered but was not. In 1920, a zoologist in New York thought an olinguito museum specimen was so unusual that it might be a new species, but he never followed through in publishing the discovery.

Giving the olinguito its scientific name is just the beginning. “This is the first step,” Helgen said. “Proving that a species exists and giving it a name is where everything starts. This is a beautiful animal, but we know so little about it. How many countries does it live in? What else can we learn about its behaviour? What do we need to do to ensure its conservation?” Helgen is already planning his next mission into the clouds.

The team’s discovery is published in the Aug. 15 issue of the journal ZooKeys.

Cute Pictures: Baby Olinguito Found in Colombia: here.

If you’re like most of the internet, you’ll love this feline photo. Behold: the first camera trap image of an Andean cat in the Argentine province of Neuquen, courtesy of the WCS Patagonian and Andean Steppe program. This is the farthest south and lowest elevation at which the species has been photographed: here.

A catalog of mammalian type specimens in the collections of Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway, is presented. All type specimens in the Museum’s mammal collection were revisited and the respective label information was compared with the data provided in the original descriptions. Most taxa were described from type series with no specimen particularly assigned to holotype. The compiled catalog of the type specimens is not intended as a taxonomic revision of the respective taxa, which is why we have not designated lectotypes from the collection’s type series. Specimens that were clearly marked as “the type” in the original description were considered holotypes. The catalog consists of 19 taxa, with the year of authority corrected for three taxa: here.

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