The Olinguito
A new mammal was discovered in 2013, first in museum drawers, then in the cloud forests of the Andes.
What was reported
In 2013, researchers led by the Smithsonian announced the olinguito, the first new species of carnivore found in the Americas in 35 years. It's a small, fluffy, orange-brown relative of raccoons that lives in the trees of the Andean cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador.
The zoologist Kristofer Helgen first noticed it while examining specimens in a museum in Chicago, where its skins had been mislabelled for decades. One had even been kept in zoos in the 1960s and 70s, mistaken for a relative, the olingo.
Explanations offered
His team confirmed it with DNA and then found living olinguitos in Ecuador's cloud forests. It shows that even a fair-sized mammal can be overlooked, and that museum collections still hold undiscovered species.
- When
- Announced in 2013
- Where
- Andean cloud forest, Pichincha, Ecuador
- Witnesses
- The zoologist Kristofer Helgen and his team
- Status
- Confirmed
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