Sunday, October 13, 2013

New Species (OK, almost new): Laos' giant flying squirrel

What's Lao for "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat"?

I missed this one when it first came out. Laos, it seems, has a very impressive flying squirrel, the second in its enigmatic genus, discovered at a market in 2012.  With a total length of over a meter (very impressive, even if it's mostly tail), the squirrel is one of the world's largest. Biswamoyopterus laoensis a close relative to Biswamoyopterus buswasi, itself known from only one specimen, found in 1981 in India. 
As I wrote in Shadows of Existence, the trendline of new mammal species discoveries is sloping up, not down.  Part of that is differentiating similar species via DNA and other techniques, but we're a long way from exhausting possible discoveries in the wild.  A new species and genus of rat, Halmaheramys bokimekot, just turned up in Indonesia, five new bats were found in Senegal, and the list just goes on. 
Are we done with finding distinct new species of large land mammals (say, 25kg or larger)? I think not.  Marc van Roosmalen's spectacular black and white jaguar may be a new species (given that van Roosmalen is the greatest living discoverer of Amazonian mammals, his certainty about this is nothing to dismiss).  The evidence for a new primate in Sumatra, the Orang Pendek, is pretty good if not yet definitive. Either would bring major headlines if confirmed. 
There may be many more headlines before we're done cataloging the mammals of the world.

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