Charismatic and cuddly new species aren't often discovered in a world so mapped, traveled and studied -- so give a warm welcome to Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, the latest member of the elephant shrew family!
Found two years ago in the forests of Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains and scheduled for a scientific debut today in the Journal of Zoology, R. Udzungwensis -- less stuffily known as the grey-faced sengi -- is the first newly identified sengi in 126 years.
At 1.5 pounds, the grey-faced sengi is a full 25 percent larger than any other member of the sengi family, who are also known as elephant shrews. That might seem a strange name for creatures weighing little more than a can of Coke, but they're actually distant relatives of elephants (and, for that matter, aardvarks and the dearly departed sea cow.)
In fact, elephant shrews aren't really shrews at all; they just bear that name because 19th century scientists didn't have the expertise and equipment necessary to realize that the pint-sized furballs had a claim to mammalian royalty. But look at the four-toed sengi picture at right and you can see the relation, refracted by 100 million years of evolution but still visible.
The picture comes from the elephant shrew website of Galen Rathbun, a
California Academy of Sciences mammologist. Along with Italian sengi specialist Francesco Rovero, Rathbun discovered R. Udzungwensis. He's spent the last 30 years of his life studying sengis -- so if anyone deserved to discover a new species, it was him.
Scientists discover new species of giant elephant-shrew [press release]
The R. Udzungwensis study is not yet online, but will appear in the Journal of Zoology.
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