New Tapir Species!

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It is incredibly amazing that species this size are still unknown, who knows what´s left to discover. IMO I would think that the scientific name should be something like Tapirus medici, in honour of Patricia Medici which has done incredible effords to conserve all species of tapir, and if Im not wrong she was the founder of the IUCN Tapir Specialist Group.

ps. I just read this and for first time thought I would be able to start a controversial thread, but I got just 12 minutes late.;);)
 
Me too, you guys beat me to it.

So to summarise, it seems to be smaller, darker and with a longer, more horse-like head with a less distinctive crest than the lowland tapir. Does that sound right?

And who knows what else is out there?
 
Very exciting news!

Interestingly it diverged from the Brazilian/Mountain Tapir lineage before that split into those two species, which suggests it really is a decent species. Further, its still found in some of the same areas as the Brazilian Tapir, I wonder how the two co-exist?
 
The cladograms in the paper point to there being a possible extra species in Ecuador.
 
In the book "Blootvoets door de Amazone" ( Dutch for Barfooted through the Amazone ) published 2008 Marc G.M. van Roosmalen mention his Dwarf tapir as being described as Tapirus pygmaeus and provides a picture of a skull and a drawing !
He discovered the species by listning to the local hunters who told him that there are living 2 different species in the area ( sounds somehow similar..... ) !
In the discription of the Kobomani tapir van Roosmalen is not mentioned in the literature-list what makes me wonder.
 
vogelcommando said:
In the book "Blootvoets door de Amazone" ( Dutch for Barfooted through the Amazone) published 2008 Marc G.M. van Roosmalen mention his Dwarf tapir as being described as Tapirus pygmaeus and provides a picture of a skull and a drawing......In the discription of the Kobomani tapir van Roosmalen is not mentioned in the literature-list what makes me wonder.
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I also found it very strange that Roosmalen's findings received no mention in the article describing Tapirus kabomani. Given that T. pygmaeus and T. kabomani are both described in similar terms [basically small and dark], it seems fairly likely that these names refer to one & the same species.
Mammalogists seem to have largely ignored Roosmalen's description of T. pygmaeus, but that name may yet prove to be a senior synonym of T. kabomani.
 
I get the impression that a lot of Rosmalen's descriptions of new species get ignored by zoologists in general - though I do not know how deservedly.
 
Well this is very good news. I was expecting this to be another "discovery" that was just splitting up a species, not a new animal.
 
MikeG said:
I also found it very strange that Roosmalen's findings received no mention in the article describing Tapirus kabomani. Given that T. pygmaeus and T. kabomani are both described in similar terms [basically small and dark], it seems fairly likely that these names refer to one & the same species.
Mammalogists seem to have largely ignored Roosmalen's description of T. pygmaeus, but that name may yet prove to be a senior synonym of T. kabomani.
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Darren Naish over at Tetrapod Zoology has written a short article on this new tapir taxon, and mentions the Roosmalen tapir briefly:

Some of you might be wondering what the deal is with another recently named claimed tapir species: Marc van Roosmalen’s Tapirus pygmaeus, also from the Brazilian Amazon. While the T. kabomani type specimen can be shown to be osteologically mature due to its erupted first molar teeth, the same cannot be said of T. pygmaeus: it seems that the type specimen (named, obviously, for its supposedly novel small size) is a juvenile, and a juvenile of T. terrestris. Cozzuol et al. (2013) don’t even mention T. pygmaeus, I assume because it was never officially published.
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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2013/12/17/new-living-species-of-tapir/
 
Thanks TLD, I actually tried to find the original description of van Roosmalen and it seems that descriptions of his new species in general are lacking. The question now is did he ever bother to write the articles.
 
Van Roosmalen's discription "on line" should actualy be recognized but I guess the lack of a type-specimen makes it invalide.
However already Spix in the 18th sentuary made mention of a dark-colored pygmy tapir !
 
the largest terrestrial mammal discovered since the Saola in 1992!
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Unless this is a very small tapir, I'd have thought that this was the largest terrestrial mammal formally described since the Kouprey in 1937.
 
IanRRobinson said:
Unless this is a very small tapir, I'd have thought that this was the largest terrestrial mammal formally described since the Kouprey in 1937.
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It is a particularly small tapir - the smallest species, at up to 110kg according to the article linked in the OP.

Saola, however, are apparently lighter, weighing 90-100kg according to Wikipedia, although with a body length of 150cm and a shoulder height of 80-90cm it has larger dimensions.
 
Jurek7 said:
I wonder if any was kept in Europe or USA as Brazilian Tapir?
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They could have possibly been kept in the past listed as Brazilian Tapir but it's unlikely. It seems people knew the difference for a long time and even if one or two had been mixed in to the captive population of Brazilian Tapir, the genes would have been long breed out.

~Thylo:cool:
 
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