Hyorhinomys stuempkei, new-rat-species-found-in-remote-indonesian-rainforest

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana, October 11, 2015 (ENS) – A new rat with features never before seen by scientists has been discovered on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia a two-day trek from the nearest village. The Hog-nosed rat, Hyorhinomys stuempkei, is so genetically different from other rats that its discoverers classified it as an entirely new genus and species.
Jake Esselstyn, who serves as Museum of Natural Science Curator of Mammals at Louisiana State University and fellow scientists from Australia and Indonesia found the new rat on the second day of their field season in 2013.

LSU Museum of Natural Science Mammal Curator Jake Esselstyn (Photo by Kevin Rowe)

Esselstyn and Museum Victoria Senior Curator of Mammals Kevin Rowe set out in opposite directions from their field camp to check their traps. They each caught the same type of animal in their traps and knew at once that they were looking at something new.
“We had never seen anything like this. It was obviously a new species. We came back to camp and were both surprised that the other one had it as well,” Esselstyn said.
The animal is a shrew rat with a large, flat, pink nose and forward-facing nostrils for-READ MORE-http://ens-newswire.com/2015/10/11/new-rat-species-found-in-remote-indonesian-rainforest/