Students discover a bald parrot

Brazilian students have discovered a new parrot species in the southern Amazon - a green plumed bird with a vulture’s hooked neck and a bald orange head.

The bird, which measures 10 inches from head to tail and weighs about six ounces, was found in the Amazon state of Para by two zoology students at the University of Sao Paulo.

A complete scientific description including the bird’s scientific name will appear in the July edition of the ornithological journal, The Auk.

The students captured the bird while collecting specimens for a master’s thesis in a little-studied area of the Amazon rainforest.

Tony Juniper, joint author of A guide to the Parrots of the World, called the discovery an important one.

‘‘I think these days the discovery of any new species of vertebrate is a red letter day,’’ he said in London. ‘‘The fact that we’re still finding animals like this does underline the incompleteness of our understanding of biodiversity. Many species are going extinct without ever going noticed.’’