Scientists identified a mammal been mistaken for its cousin for over 100 years.
The olinguito is a member of the Procyonidae family, which also includes raccoons, a Smithsonian press release reported.
The furry creature lives in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. It is the newest species in the order Carnivora.
"The discovery of the olinguito shows us that the world is not yet completely explored, its most basic secrets not yet revealed," Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and leader of the team, said. "If new carnivores can still be found, what other surprises await us? So many of the world's species are not yet known to science. Documenting them is the first step toward understanding the full richness and diversity of life on Earth."
It took scientists 10 years to distinguish the carnivore from the olingo. Researchers studied DNA from over 95 percent of the world's olingo museum specimens in order to make the discovery.
They found the olinguito had smaller teeth and skulls that were differently shaped from their similar cousins. They were also smaller with denser coats.
After studying DNA from various museums, the team set out to find an olinguito in the wild.
"The data from the old specimens gave us an idea of where to look, but it still seemed like a shot in the dark," Roland Kays, director of the Biodiversity and Earth Observation Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said. "But these Andean forests are so amazing that even if we didn't find the animal we were looking for, I knew our team would discover something cool along the way."
Helgen and Kays found what they were looking for in the Andes mountains, and spent three-weeks documenting the animal.
The researchers observed the olinguito is "mostly active at night, is mainly a fruit eater, rarely comes out of the trees and has one baby at a time."
Helgen and Kays were especially concerned about the olinguito's cloud forest habitat, and estimated 42 percent of which has already been destroyed by humans.
"The cloud forests of the Andes are a world unto themselves, filled with many species found nowhere else, many of them threatened or endangered," Helgen said. "We hope that the olinguito can serve as an ambassador species for the cloud forests of Ecuador and Colombia, to bring the world's attention to these critical habitats."
People have been around olinguitos for at least a century, but did not know they were different from the similar olingo. Scientists have come close to making the discovery in the past, but this is the first time the matter has been thoroughly researched and the findings published.
"This is the first step," Helgen said. "Proving that a species exists and giving it a name is where everything starts. This is a beautiful animal, but we know so little about it. How many countries does it live in? What else can we
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