Scientists report the extinction of a monkey once common in West Africa.
Ghana and the Ivory Coast once hosted a thriving population of Miss Waldron's red colobus. These 10-kilogram monkeys were one of more than a dozen different subspecies of red colobus monkeys whose habitats extend from Senegal through Zanzibar. The last confirmed sighting of a Miss Waldron's was in the late 1970s, and the animal has been on the World Conservation Union endangered species list since 1988. In 1993, anthropologist John Oates of Hunter College in New York City began an exhaustive search for the primate. His team of scientists spent 7 years combing the few remaining patches of rainforest in Ghana and the Ivory Coast and even offered money to locals to lead them to see or hear a Miss Waldron's.