A striking new monkey

The title of "newest known mammal" is a moniker no species keeps for very long. The giant elephant shrew had it only a matter of days before Australian scientists announced a new ukari, a large species of monkey, from the remote Pantepui region of Brazil. The new species, found after years of study sparked by local citizens' descriptions of a monkey different from the known ukaris, was christened Cacajao ayresii. Discoverer Jean-Phillipe Boubli of Aukland University said, "Finding a relatively large monkey as a new species these days is pretty cool. It shows how little we really know about the biodiversity of the Amazon."