Kissing cousins

摘要

The bonobo was the last large mammal to become known to science, having been "discovered" barely 70 years ago. The discovery was made by the examination of dry bones in the Tervuren Museum, Belgium. The first to note the anatomical distinctiveness of the bonobo was the American anatomist Harold Coolidge, but it was a German, Ernst Schwartz, who got into print first, in 1929. Schwartz actually named the bonobo as a subspecies of chimpanzee. Only later was it given full species status, Pan paniscus.