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Miss Waldron's red colobus

subspecies of mammal

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ1938907 ↗
Source-derived summary

Miss Waldron's red colobus (Piliocolobus waldronae) is a species of the red colobus native to West Africa. It had previously been described as a subspecies of the western red colobus, P. badius. It has not been officially sighted since 1978 and was considered extinct in 2000. However, new evidence suggests that a very small number of these monkeys may be living in the southeast corner of Côte d'Ivoire. The IUCN Red List notes Miss Waldron's red colobus as critically endangered.

Miss Waldron's red colobus was discovered in December 1933 by Willoughby P. Lowe, a British Museum (Natural History) collector who had shot eight specimens of the animal. Robert William Hayman named it after a fellow museum employee, Miss Fanny Waldron, who assisted in the expedition where Lowe collected the eight specimens.

Description

Black fur covers the majority of Miss Waldron's red colobus, but a distinctive pattern of bright red fur can be found on its forehead and thighs, allowing it to be distinguished from conspecifics. An Old World monkey, it grows to a height of about 3 feet (1 m), with a head that is small for its frame. No photograph of a living Miss Waldron's red colobus is known to exist.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Miss Waldron's red colobus” as subspecies of mammal. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA sound reference starting point where classification, measurement and the date of the underlying evidence remain visible. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 2000, 1933—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Miss, Waldron's and colobus can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as subspecies of mammal. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1938907. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978, 2000 and 1933.

Critical limits

A general summary may omit uncertainty, sample limits or methodological disagreement that is explicit in the technical record. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Check terminology, classification and the date of the cited evidence. Scientific names and technical consensus can change while older records retain historical value.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Miss Waldron's red colobus” 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.