In a November 2017 article, an international team of scientists described a new species of great ape: the Tapanuli orangutan.The announcement was based on years of researched that demonstrated the species exhibited genetic, physical and behavioral differences that distinguished it from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.Even as conservationists celebrated the description of a new species, they raised an alarm about the dangers facing the ape — notably, a hydropower dam planned for its sole remaining habitat.This is the second in a two-part series about the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan. Part One of this series can be found here. For months, rumors had been flying around in the communities of conservationists and biologists. Something big was coming. Then, in November 2017, the bombshell officially dropped: Researchers had confirmed the identification of a new great ape, the eighth such species alive today known to science. The announcement of the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), via a November 2017 article in the journal Current Biology, was the culmination of a years-long process that involved multiple teams of scientists, with each gathering different pieces of the puzzle. Yet that same announcement was tempered with a sobering reality: that a hydropower project and other threats are rapidly pushing it toward extinction. Demonstrators hold a banner protesting China’s funding of the Batang Toru dam in front of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by Hans Nicholas Jong/Mongabay. Species discovery For years, groups of scientists conducted research on the genetics and morphology of orangutans in Indonesia. Indonesian scientist Anton Nurcahyo and his professor at Australian National University, Colin Groves, found that the Tapanuli orangutan had a smaller skull and larger canines than other orangutans, while a team led by the University of Zürich’s Michael Krützen and Alexander Nater discovered three separate genetic lines of orangutans: Bornean, Sumatran, and Tapanuli. While the scientists worked separately but simultaneously, everything began to come together at the International Primatological Society meeting in Chicago in 2016, says Matt Nowak, director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme’s (SOCP) biodiversity monitoring unit and one of the lead authors of the Current Biology article. Nowak says that, knowing about their work, he met with primatologist Serge Wich, then with Liverpool John Moores University in England, Krützen, Nater and others on the sidelines of that conference. “The collaboration developed and all the scientific pieces fell into place,” Nowak says. “It was the first time that we actually started to realize that [the Tapanuli orangutan] might be a new species.”