GNN has reported a-plenty on animals that were last seen in the 20th century and believed extinct that were then rediscovered, but a story from the island of New Guinea now stretches that pattern to its absolute limits.
Known only from fossilized bones that date back 6,000-plus years, two species of arboreal marsupials have been confirmed to still exist, begging the use of the often-exploited descriptor “living fossils.”
The pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai) and the ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis) are the two newest members of a very exclusive group of animals.
“A relatively small number of animal species hold the distinction of having been described initially from fossil remains, then subsequently discovered as a living animal,” the authors of a paper describing this incredible discovery, wrote in their introduction. “In paleontology, lineages that drop out of the fossil record and then re-emerge after long periods are termed ‘Lazarus taxa.’”
On the Bird’s Head, or Vogelkop peninsula of West Papua—the Indonesian-controlled portion of the island of New Guinea—late 20th-century archaeological excavations on Stone Age sites found skull and teeth evidence of an animal that didn’t exist previously in the fossil record. However, one researcher in 2007 suggested that very animal probably still existed based on its similarities to known marsupials on the island.
New Guinea is famously underexplored and its more secretive life-forms famously undocumented, and the researcher felt greater surveys would eventually reveal the animal’s continued existence.
A photographer named Carlos Bocos, on a visit to Vogelkop organized by mammalwatching.org, recently photographed a long-fingered possum in a tree, but that alone wasn’t enough evidence since there are two other species of long-fingered possums.
These animals have freakishly-elongated third digits which they use to feel around for and extract wood boring insects that make up their diet.
Fortunately for 70-year-old Tim Flannery, lead author of the paper on the rediscovery, two museum specimens had been wrongly-identified as a closely related species and stored at the University of New Guinea for teaching purposes.
“We’ve been able to finalize two pieces of work that are incredibly important from a biological and a conservation perspective, documenting the existence of rare marsupials in an area under threat,” Flannery told the Guardian. “It’s sort of a crowning glory in my career as a biologist.”
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Flannery et al’s research, documenting Bocos’ photographs, the fossil record, and museum specimens helped him determine that the animal isn’t only a separate species, but a separate genus as well. It’s the first new genus of New Guinean mammal documented since 1937.
Fortunately for differentiating this possum over others, its enormous finger is a dead giveaway.
The other species that Flannery and his team described, which included members of the indigenous community of Vogelkop, who consider the animals to be sacred incarnations of past ancestors, is the ring-tailed glider.
Yet again this species was only known from fossilized skulls with teeth found in archaeological digs, but was actually photographed alive in 2015. Here too, Flannery and his team separated the animal into a new genus: Tous.
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“This newly described genus is present in the Australian Pliocene and Pleistocene fossil record, and its living relatives are the Greater gliders (Petauroides spp.) and the Lemuroid ringtail (Hemibelideus lemuroides) of eastern Australia,” the introduction to the study describing this glider reads.
It proves that Australia and Vogelkop were once connected before the latter became part of New Guinea, suggesting its forests act as a potential haven of other archaic wildlife from Australia’s past.
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