The investigation began in 2018 when Ramírez-Chaves, a professor at the Universidad de Caldas, and Noguera-Urbano, a researcher at the Instituto Humboldt, noticed discrepancies in the porcupine populations of the Colombian Caribbean and the inter-Andean Magdalena Valley. These creatures, long dismissed as members of known species, possessed a singular anatomy. Small and lithe, with a body measuring between 26 and 33 centimeters, they are defined by a prehensile tail that accounts for more than 70% of their total length, acting as a fifth limb among the swaying branches.
To confirm their suspicions, the researchers embarked on a journey through the historical memory of science. They compared fresh DNA samples with centuries-old specimens held in London and Stockholm, tracing the lineage of an animal that had lived in the shadow of misidentification. They found that since the British zoologist Oldfield Thomas described a similar species in 1899, no other endemic porcupine had been discovered on Colombian soil.
The new species bears the name Coendou vossi, a tribute to the mammalogist Robert S. Voss, yet its true significance lies in the geography it occupies. It makes its home in the tropical dry forests of six departments, including Caldas and Cundinamarca. These are landscapes of scarcity, where decades of cattle ranching and agriculture have left only fragments of the original canopy.
By giving this creature a name, Ramírez-Chaves and Noguera-Urbano have pulled it from the obscurity of the archives into the light of the present. It remains a nocturnal herbivore, a quiet resident of the bark and leaves, whose sparse brown fur and 55-millimeter spines are now recognized as unique to the land they inhabit. In a world where the vast is often prioritized, the researchers chose the small and the overlooked, proving that even in the most studied drawers of a museum, nature still hides its secrets.