Two new species of woolly flying squirrels discovered in SW China

Two new species of woolly flying squirrels have been discovered in southwest China by a research team of Chinese, Australian and U.S. scientists, according to The Xinhua News Agency reports.

The two new species have been named the Tibetan woolly flying squirrel and the Yunnan woolly flying squirrel after the places of their discovery.

The team's research was published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Woolly flying squirrel is among the rarest and least studied mammals in the world. It is currently classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with its total population size estimated to be between 1,000 and 3,000.