The kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji), also known as the highland mangabey, is a species of Old World monkey that lives in the highland forests of Tanzania. It was independently described in December 2003 and July 2004, making it the first new African monkey species discovered since 1984. Originally assigned to the genus Lophocebus, genetic and morphological data showed that it is more closely related to the genus Papio. It was subsequently assigned to a new genus, Rungwecebus, named after Mount Rungwe. Rungwecebus is the first new monkey genus described since 1923.
The kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji), also known as the highland mangabey, is a species of Old World monkey that lives in the highland forests of Tanzania. It was independently described in December 2003 and July 2004, making it the first new African monkey species discovered since 1984. Originally assigned to the genus Lophocebus, genetic and morphological data showed that it is more closely related to the genus Papio. It was subsequently assigned to a new genus, Rungwecebus, named after Mount Rungwe. Rungwecebus is the first new monkey genus described since 1923.
==Description== The kipunji's relatively long pelage is light or medium brown with white on the end of the tail and the ventrum. The pelage close to the hands and feet tends to be a medium to dark brown. Its hands, feet, and face are all black. It does not appear to show any sexual dimorphism in relation to pelage coloration. Adult male kipunjis have a body length of and are estimated to weigh between .
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).