A MAGICAL MARSUPIAL

Another unexpected mammalian discovery made recently is one that occurred not in a rainforest but inside a museum. In 2008, while browsing in the collections of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém, Brazil, postgraduate biology student Silvia Pavan was intrigued by an unidentified rat-sized opossum skin with noticeably rich mahogany-coloured fur and a red head. She sought further specimens in other museums and discovered several, none of which had been formally identified either. Some of her colleagues then travelled to the source of these specimens – Itaituba I National Forest in Pará, Brazil – and succeeded in capturing some living individuals using a series of humane pitfall traps.

After subjecting these examples to a full study, Pavan and her colleagues confirmed that they represented a hitherto-undescribed species of short-tailed opossum, which they have now officially named the gnome opossum Monodelphis saci – the saci being a magical gnome-like entity from Brazilian folklore that wears a red cap, and which this new red-headed opossum brought to mind. Ironically, it appears to be widely distributed in four different Brazilian states, despite its very existence having been recognised by science so belatedly. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/ gnome-marsupial-new-species-brazil/ 23 Feb 2017.