If you’ve been reading of the finding of a new primate in the last few days, you aren’t going crazy if you thought it sounded awfully familiar.

On January 16, 2008, you learned here of the discovery of a new monkey in the Amazon, with the Latin name Cacajao ayresii.

This week various media releases, stimulated by the National Geographic News, have caused a new round of articles. But when I wrote about this new uakari monkey from the Amazon rainforest, there were no photographs available last month. Now I have located photographs of the discoverer (top and below) and Nat Geo has made one of the discovered (directly below) available too.

Cacajao ayresii, black uakari monkey.

For those that need proof that actually searching, a la’ the cryptozoological method, does turn up results, this discovery is one that followed a specific pattern of looking and finding.

Auckland University’s only primatologist Jean Philippe Boubli undertook the first ever study of the black uakari monkey during a series of wildlife surveys after following native Yanomamo Indians on their hunts along the Rio Araca, a tributary of the Rio Negro in Brazil.

Jean Philippe Boubli, (Ph. D., University of California, Berkeley) Auckland University, New Zealand, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology.

“They told us about this black uakari monkey, which was slightly different to the one we knew from Pico de Neblina National Park, where I’d worked earlier,” said Dr. Boubli.

“I searched for that monkey for at least five years. The reason I couldn’t find it was because the place where they were was sort of unexpected.”

The Boubli Lab ~ Primate Field Research Station

“Finding a relatively large monkey as a new species these days is pretty cool,” Dr. Boubli told the National Geographic Magazine.

“It shows how little we really know about the biodiversity of the Amazon.”