It is a very sad thing to realise that a species is no more, that the last member of its kind has now gone. Once a species has become extinct there is no bringing it back. However, sometimes, just sometimes, they can surprise us.
There are a number of species that were once thought to be long gone that have popped up again to astonish us, revealing that they were never really gone at all.
Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna:
This curious little mammal is one of only three species in its genus. Like all echidnas (of which there are not many), long-beaked echidnas are monotremes and lay eggs. In fact, aside from platypus’ they are the only mammals on earth to do so. And that’s not the only strange thing about them.
They are also covered in protective keratinous spines and have a long protuberant snout with which they forage for insects. Although all echidnas are rare, this particular species has proved more elusive than most.
It was first described and collected in 1961 and had not been seen since, leading many to think it had died out. Until last year that is… In November 2023 footage of this incredible mammal was captured in its home, the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesia, more than 60 years after it was last seen.
Read the full story of its rediscovery here.
Victorian grassland earless dragon
Another 2023 rediscovery, this Australian lizard was unseen by scientists for more than 50 years. Once common in the state of Victoria, the species became critically endangered in the 1960s due to extensive habitat destruction, with the last confirmed sighting before now happening in 1969.
Based on this a study published in 2019 suggested it may have sadly become extinct. Nevertheless, hope remained for its survival due to various unconfirmed sightings, and in the end, these hopes were borne out, with an ecological survey rediscovering the first individual just last year. Subsequent fieldwork has resulted in the collection of 16 individuals who are now in a breeding programme at Melbourne Zoo.
Coelacanth
(I wrote a report on this one when I was in the 4th grade. 🙂
The next on our list is perhaps the archetypical Lazarus animal, and unlike the echidna, it was not “lost” for decades but millennia! Known from fossil records since the 19th Century, these ancient fish were thought to have become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, some 66 million years ago.
However, much to everyone’s surprise, a live specimen was brought up from the depths by a local fisherman off the coast of South Africa in 1938.
The fisherman himself had no idea of the great significance of his catch, but luckily a museum employee, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, happened to examine the fish and knew she was looking at something special. This serendipitous discovery is now considered to be one of the most important zoological findings of the twentieth century.
Chacoan peccary
Like the coelacanth, for a long time this pig-like ungulate was known from fossil records alone. Again, it was thought to be long extinct, existing as paleontological evidence only, and was declared as such.
In 1971 however, a team of biologists decided to follow up on rumoured sightings by locals and “discovered” the species living in the hot and dry Chaco region of Argentina. It should probably be noted that this local knowledge of existence is probably common to many of the animals on this list and when we speak of a species being lost, that could well just mean “lost to Western science”!
Cuban solenodon
New Guinea big-eared bat
Lost for over a century, this bat was first collected in 1890, named (after its massive ears) in 1914, and then… wasn’t seen again. That is until 2012, when two very lucky University of Queensland PhD students collecting bats of many species found one they couldn’t easily identify. They then commenced some rigorous detective work.
After careful examination and comparison with museum specimens it was found to be a female of the long thought extinct big-eared species. This came as a very pleasant surprise to conservationists who had thought it wiped out by habitat loss and human encroachment.