New monkey species named for GoldenPalace.com

Thursday, April 14, 2005 | 9:35 a.m.

NEW YORK -- A new species of monkey will be named for GoldenPalace.com, the Internet casino that paid $28,000 last year for a grilled cheese sandwich supposedly imprinted with an image of the Virgin Mary, an online auction house said Wednesday.

GoldenPalace.com paid $650,000 for the naming rights in a March 3 online auction. The proceeds of the auction were to benefit Madidi National Park in Bolivia, where the species was discovered by a Wildlife Conservation Society scientist last year.

The formal name of the species will be Callicebus aureipalatii, a Latinized version of Golden Palace, and its common name will be "GoldenPalace.com Monkey," CharityFolks.com, the Web site that handled the sale, said in a news release issued Wednesday.

"This species will bear our name for as long as it exists," GoldenPalace.com CEO Richard Rowe said in a statement. "Hundreds, even thousands of years from now, the GoldenPalace.com Monkey will live to carry our name through the ages."

The new species, a type of titi monkey, is about a foot tall and has a golden crown and a white-tipped tail. The term "titi monkey" describes about 30 species of monkeys found in South America.