New species of tapir discovered in New York City!

Scientists have just described a new species of tapir from South America with the help of a one-hundred-year-old specimen from the American Natural History Museum in New York City.

In 1913, former US President Theodore Roosevelt was on an expedition to the Amazonian rainforest. He shot and killed a Tapir - for scientific purposes of course - and members of his party killed a few more - also for scientific purposes. One of those killed was a bit different to the others, and Roosevelt wrote at the time:

One was a bull, full grown but very much smaller than the animal I had killed. The hunters said that this was a distinct kind. The skull and skin were sent back with the other specimens to the American Museum, where after due examination and comparison its specific identity will be established.

The new species, Tapirus kabomani. Drawing by G. Braga

The experts at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City's Central Park concluded that it was a member of the same species as the other tapirs. Fast forward one hundred years and a group of South American scientists now think those experts were wrong and Roosevelt was describing a species that was new to science.

Unlike the hunters in Roosevelt's expedition, the scientists who identified the new species have not even seen one alive. They only have a few dead specimens, photographs, some pooh and descriptions from local hunters to go on.

(This is more than the scientists who recently described a new species of platypus based on a single fossil tooth, had to go on.)

But, unlike the experts in 1912, the scientists had all the tools of modern science at their disposal: Motion sensitive automatic cameras; DNA tests; and powerful computers that can make sense of all of the different measurements that they make.

Captured on an automatic 'camera trap'. Photo by F.R. Santos

Roosevelt on a 'science' expedition

There were already four known living species of tapir, three from South and Central America and one from South-East Asia. The new species, which lives in Brazil, Columbia and French Guiana is the smallest living tapir species, weighing about 110 kg. The largest species, the Malayan tapir, can weigh more than 350 kg.

The new species, Tapirus kabomani is described in the December issue of the Journal of Mammology.

Previously undiscovered links:

• Find out more tapir facts from National Geographic.
• Scientific American has lots of details about the new discovery, or you can read the original paper.
• What do the discovery of a new species of tapir and Teddy Bears have in common? Why Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt, that's what.
• The movie Night at the Museum is set in the American Museum of Natural History and features Robin Williams as a gun-toting Theodore Roosevelt.