Elusive Attenborough echidna rediscovered in Indonesia

LONDON

An elusive echidna feared extinct after disappearing for six decades has been rediscovered in a remote part of Indonesia, on an expedition that also found a new kind of tree-dwelling shrimp.

The Zaglossus attenboroughi, a kind of long-beaked echidna named for famed British naturalist David Attenborough, had last been seen in 1961.

Echidnas are nocturnal and shy, making them difficult to find at the best of times, and the Attenborough long-beaked echidna has never been recorded outside the extremely remote Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia's Papua region.

They are the last vestiges of an ancient animal line, explained James Kempton, a biologist from the University of Oxford who led the expedition.

"The reason it appears so unlike other mammals is because it is a member of the monotremes - an egg-laying group that separated from the rest of the mammal tree-of-life 200 million years ago."

It took a team of scientists and experts from Britain and Indonesia four weeks and 80 camera traps to find the echidna, and it was only on the last day, and the final memory card of the trip, that the creature made an appearance.

Just a few seconds of black and white footage shows the slightly ungainly creature ambling through the undergrowth, apparently unaware of the excitement its very existence is likely to elicit.