Biologists have confirmed the existence of a 200-million-year-old species of egg-laying mammal that has been assumed to be extinct.
Suspected footage of Zaglossus attenboroughi — the long-beaked echidna named after famed English broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough — was initially captured in 2023 by Oxford University during an expedition to the Cyclops Mountains, a rugged rainforest in Indonesia.
By combining modern technology with indigenous knowledge, researchers recently confirmed that the long-beaked echidna had been found, according to a paper published in the journal NPJ Biodiversity last month.
The species hadn’t been recorded for more than 60 years, when a dead specimen was found in the region, the researchers said.
Cyclops Mountains Nature Reserve
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However, evidence of the echidna’s existence was found throughout the region in recent decades.
In 2007, a team of researchers found “nose pokes” — trace signs the echidnas make when they forage underground for invertebrates — in the Cyclops, according to the paper.
Indigenous groups have also reported sightings of the species in the past two decades.
In 2017 and 2018, researchers combined participatory mapping with indigenous and other knowledge to assess the probability that echidnas still existed.
Long-beaked Echidna by Charles Hamilton Smith circa 1837.
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Camera trapping also played a key role in confirming their existence. Camera traps deployed in the Cyclops in 2022 and 2023 garnered the photographic evidence — 110 photos total from 26 individual events — needed for researchers to continue pursuing the lost species. The photographic evidence was published in the paper.
The long-beaked echidna is one of just five egg-laying mammals in existence today, including the platypus and two other species of modern echidna, the researchers said.
These mammals are the “sole living representatives” of monotreme — or egg-laying — lineage that diverged from therians, or marsupials and placental mammals, more than 200 million years ago, according to the paper.
The long-beaked echidna once also lived in the Oenaka Range of Papua New Guinea. But the Cyclops Mountains are the only location where the long-beaked echidna has been recorded in modern times.
There are currently more than 2,000 “so-called lost species” — species that have gone undocumented for sustained periods of time, according to the paper.
“Rediscoveries offer hope that others survive, especially in places where biological research has been limited,” the researchers said.