Echidna Named After David Attenborough Thought To Be Extinct Spotted in Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia

An animal named after David Attenborough that many thought was extinct still lived. The ancient echidna was spotted in a rainforest in Indonesia.

Extinct Echidna Survived?

James Kempton led a scientific expedition to the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesian New Guinea. The group aimed to build a case for the biodiverse island's increased protection to preserve it.

Their search was productive as, for the first time, they saw evidence of the long-beaked echidna named after British broadcaster and biologist David Attenborough that was thought to be extinct. The only surviving example of the species was the decades-long specimen of a dead animal housed in a museum. However, that was before the recent sighting of the echidna from the expedition.

Trail cameras recorded a video of the long-beaked echidna in the Attenborough area. The clip demonstrates that this unique mammal that lays eggs still exists in the Cyclops Mountains, the only location where it has ever been observed. The webpage for the expedition states that we must take immediate action to protect the echidna and its endangered alpine habitat.

Oxford's Department of Biology reports that the researchers installed 80 cameras and ascended almost 11,000 meters during the excursion. The cameras documented the long-beaked echidna of Attenborough in both still and motion pictures. The researchers noticed the echidna on the final day of their excursion.

One said the rare egg-laying mammal has the hedgehog's spines, an anteater's snout, and a mole's feet. The online user jokingly added that the researchers found another platypus.

Kempton said they could collect thousands of invertebrate specimens and almost a hundred frogs and reptiles. Two species of frogs were reportedly new to science, and dozens of new insects and genera were also discovered.

Extinct Fish Still Alive

The discovery of something considered extinct but still alive wasn't exclusive to the echidna named after Attenborough. Last month, a new study suggested that fish houting from the North Sea wasn't extinct because they were the same as the European whitefish.

A number of houses that were kept in the museum, some of which were over 250 years old, provided DNA samples for the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Amsterdam. After that, they created a phylogenetic tree by comparing the fish's DNA to that of many extant, closely related species. The researchers found almost no genetic changes between European whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus) and houting (Coregonus oxyrinchus).

First author Rob Kroes of the University of Amsterdam concluded that based on their study, the houting isn't extinct as they are the European whitefish today.

Kroes claims that it regularly occurs for individuals to be uncertain about the membership of certain creatures in a single species, especially when fish are involved. Within a species, there is often a wide range of physical traits displayed.

Biologists have long held the opinion that housing is a different species from the European whitefish because of the length of the snout and the number of gill rakers. However, based only on these traits, it is inaccurate to imply that houting is a distinct species, and per Kroes, their DNA analysis clearly shows that it isn't.

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