Cameroon scaly-tail
species of mammal
The Cameroon scaly-tail (Zenkerella insignis), also referred to as the Cameroon anomalure, flightless anomalure or flightless scaly-tail, is a rodent species endemic to West Central Africa. The first photograph of a live specimen was taken in 2016 by a trap camera in Cameroon, with the first high quality image being taken in May of 2019. The taxonomic classification of the species has been subject to recent revision.
Phylogeny
Previous common names for this species included flightless scaly-tail 'squirrel', but this is a misnomer as anomalures are very distantly related to the true squirrels of the rodent family Sciuridae and only superficially resemble them. Z. insignis is the only extant species in the genus Zenkerella and family Zenkerellidae and is the only surviving species of a lineage that diverged from the other extant anomalures (genera Idiurus and Anomalurus) ~49 million years ago (Ma). Among mammals, very few species are the sole survivors of such ancient lineages, some other examples being the pen-tailed treeshrew and the monito del monte.
Extinct fossil taxa which are putative close relatives of Z. insignis include: Zenkerella wintoni (~20 Ma, early Miocene, Kenya), Prozenkerella saharaensis (~31 Ma, early Oligocene, Libya), and possibly Oromys zenkerellinopsis (~33 Ma, earliest Oligocene, Morocco).
In 2016, it was reported that three whole-body specimens of Z. insignis were recovered on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea. At that time, it had been over 20 years since the scientific literature recorded new individuals. These specimens were used to sequence portions of the Z. insignis genome.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of mammal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1031137. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cameroon scaly-tail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.