A team of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences has discovered in a remote desert area in southwestern Africa a new species of elephant shrew , a small mammal known as a sengi that, as its name implies, sports a long snout.
It is the third species of these animals that has been released in the last decade . This is also the smallest of the 19 known.
According to the Journal of Mammalogy , Macroscelides micus , as it has been baptized, has a considerably smaller size (it weighs only 28 grams and measures 19 centimeters long, including the tail) and presents important genetic differences with its biological cousins.
Vertebrate ecology experts Jack Dumbacher and Galen Rathbun, responsible for the find, compared the specimens with those kept in London, Los Angeles, the Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, Pretoria and Windhoek.
As Dumbacher explains, "it is exciting to think that there are still unexplored places in the world that preserve unknown fauna, especially mammals." Sengis are only found in Africa, and despite their size, they are distant relatives of elephants and sea cows.
Photo: Galen Rathbun / California Academy of Sciences
