Two gigantic woolly flying squirrel species, whose scientific name is Eupetaurus cinereus, were discovered last month by scientists from Australia and China in the Himalayas.
Through their study, the team of scientists found that there are two distinct species that live thousands of miles apart at some of the highest altitudes in the Himalayas.
The two new species discovered are named the Tibetan woolly flying squirrel (Eupetaurus tibetensis) and the Yunnan (Eupetaurus nivamons). The research mentions that Tibetan woolly flying squirrel lives in the Himalayan region that intersects India, Bhutan, and Tibet, whereas the Yunnan woolly flying squirrel is a native of the Yunnan Province of southwestern China.
According to the Australian Museum, whose scientists were part of the team that discovered the new species, the woolly flying squirrels could be over 3-feet-long and weigh over 2.5kg.
Scientists have known of the woolly flying squirrel, Eupetaurus cinereus, which is among the rarest and least studied mammals in the world, for a long time. For much of the 20th century, it was thought to be extinct, until it was rediscovered in 1994 in northern Pakistan.
But after a careful review of museum specimens and published records of Eupetaurus, scientists found that the genus occurs in three distinct regions in the Himalayas–northern Pakistan and north-western India particularly Uttarakhand; south-central Tibet, northern Sikkim and western Bhutan; and north-western Yunnan, China. Genetic and morphological comparisons of these specimens also revealed that they are distinct species, two of which were discovered now and their details published in Oxford Academic’s Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society on May 31.
