��������

Sulawesi’s biodiversity was little known then, and the notion that the tarsier from the Togean Islands might be a new species spurred a series of studies that looked at everything from the tarsier’s vocalizations to its DNA sequence.

Finally, in a  published this year in the annual journal Primate Conservation, that initial discovery by Nietsch and Niemitz a quarter of a century ago has been officially confirmed as a new species: Niemitz’s tarsier (Tarsius niemitzi), named in honor of the man “universally regarded as the father of tarsier field biology,” the study says.

“The biodiversity of Sulawesi is much like the biodiversity of the Galapagos Islands, made famous by Darwin’s work,” Myron Shekelle, a professor of anthropology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and the lead author of the paper describing the new species, told Mongabay in an email.