Oxford University biologist shares first images of creature
Attenborough's long-beaked Echidna has been re-discovered
It's named after Sir David Attenborough and was last seen by scientists in 1961, but it's now been photographed for the first time in an Indonesian tropical forest.
An international team of researchers worked with local communities to deploy over 80 camera traps to film the animal. Successfully it's now seen for the first time in photos and video footage taken in the Cyclops Mountains of the Papua Province.
Recorded by science only once in 1961, Attenborough's long-beaked Echidna is a monotreme: an evolutionarily distinct group of egg-laying mammals.
Dr James Kempton, a biologist from the University of Oxford who conceived of and led the expedition, said:
"Attenborough's long-beaked echidna has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole. Because of its hybrid appearance, it shares its name with a creature of Greek mythology that is half human, half serpent. 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 about 200 million years ago."