Researchers announced Tuesday that they had discovered a new subspecies of monkey in a remote part of Amazon rain forest in Brazil.

The monkey is mostly gray and dark brown in color and is related to the saddleback tamarin monkeys, with a distinctly mottled "saddle." It was named the Mura's saddleback tamarin after the Mura Indian tribe of the Purus and Madeira river basins where it was found.

It weighs less than a pound (213 grams) and is 9 inches (240 millimeters) tall with a foot-long (320 millimeter) tail.

The small monkey was first seen by scientists on a 2007 expedition into the state of Amazonas in northwestern Brazil.

"This newly described monkey shows that even today there are major wildlife discoveries to be made," said Fabio Rohe, the lead author of a study confirming the new discovery.

"This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world's wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction," Rohe said.

(Agencies)