"The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says"
"Researchers led by the Australian scientist Tim Flannery have made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: that two charismatic marsupial species that had been thought extinct for 6,000 years are alive in rainforest in remote West Papua.
The pair are rare examples of “Lazarus taxa” – species that disappeared from fossil records in the distant past that are later found to have survived.
One of the species is a striped possum with an extraordinarily elongated fourth digit, twice as long as the rest of its fingers, that it uses to extract and feed on wood-boring insect larvae. Fossil records had previously indicated the species, known as the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai), lived in Australia’s central Queensland region about 300,000 years ago but seemed to have vanished during the ice age. Before the recent discovery, it was last known to have lived in West Papua until about 6,000 years ago."
