long-beaked echidna.......from Australia?

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Chlidonias

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Echidna find rewrites natural history books - Australia Network News - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
4 January 2013

Scientists say the discovery of a stuffed western long-beaked echidna in a London museum could mean the animal, thought to be extinct in Australia, may still be living in the nation's north-west.

The long-beaked echidna, which is about twice as big as a common Australian echidna, was thought to have become extinct in Australia in the last ice age - although it still lives in Papua New Guinea.

Dr Kristof Helgen from the Smithsonian Institution has told Radio Australia he's discovered a stuffed specimen that was only about 100 years old in London's Natural History Museum.

"I recognised...the tag that was used by a particular collector who worked for the Western Australian Museum more than 100 years ago...a famous Australian naturalist named John Tunney," he said.

"He had done a series of pioneering expeditions across northern Australia, from 1901 through 1903.

"But when I saw this tag attached to the long-beaked echidna, it didn't make sense [because] I had no idea that John Tunney had ever gone to New Guinea."

Until now, the only records of the Australian animal were from fossils more than 10,000 years ago, and also from ancient Aboriginal rock art.

But Dr Helgen says the sample at London's Natural History Museum is labelled as coming from Australia.

"When I looked closer, what I could see is the descriptive writing 'Mount Anderson, West Kimberley'," he said.

"I realised, my goodness, is this actually saying that it's actually a long beaked echidna that was collected in Australia? That was phenomenally exciting if that was true."

Researcher have recently rediscovered several Australian animals, including the scaly-tailed possum, last seen in 1917.

Dr Helgen says finding the sample in the museum does raise the prospect that the long-beaked echidnas may still be roaming in remote regions of the Kimberley.

"Ultimately I think that's probably what's the most exciting possibility...that clue that they may still be out there," he said.

"Working with animals all over the world, one thing that I've learned is that it's very easy to overestimate what we know."
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It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. There are several possibilities of which I guess the two most likely are as follows. One is that long-beaked echidnas did historically/still do live in northern Australia. Second is that the specimen is mislabelled (e.g. a collection tag from some other specimen was accidentally placed on the echidna specimen at the museum or in transit).
 
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another article with a bit more information (quoted below only in part):
Long-Beaked Echidna Found in Last Century | Endangered Species | LiveScience
3 January 2013

A critically endangered mammal thought to be extinct in Australia since the last ice age may still exist there, a new study suggests.

That speculation comes from the discovery that at least one long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal thought to exist only in New Guinea, was found in Australia in 1901 and that native Aborigine populations reported seeing the animal more recently. The 1901 specimen, described in the Dec. 28 issue of the journal Zookeys, had been shot and stuffed and was lying in a drawer, long forgotten, in the Natural History Museum in London.

"What's amazing about this study is it all hinges on a single specimen, and it's a very well-documented specimen that was collected in 1901 in Australia," said study co-author Kristofer Helgen, a zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "It's taken until 2013 for myself and the team to really unbury the specimen from the cabinets of the Natural History Museum of London."

Scientists knew the spiny, nocturnal creatures once inhabited Australia but thought it died out after the last ice age, between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when New Guinea and Australia were one continent, Helgen said.

Helgen said he was visiting the Natural History Museum in London to look at its collections when he happened upon a skinned long-beaked echidna that was neatly tagged with the species name and where it was discovered.

It turns out that in 1901, an Australian naturalist named John Tunney shot the echidna on Mount Anderson, a mountain in a vast, arid and sparsely populated region of northwest Australia, while on an expedition for a British collector. Tunney, who was trained in taxidermy, stuffed and delivered the specimen, which was later bequeathed to the Natural History Museum. There it lay forgotten for a century.

Once they realized the echidna had been spotted in recent history, the team went back to aboriginal communities in the West Kimberley region. Some of the women remembered watching their parents hunt long-beaked echidnas.

"They remembered that there used to be an echidna in the area that was much larger, and they pointed to pictures of the modern long-beaked echidna from New Guinea," Helgen told LiveScience.
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Very exiting although my first respons (before reading Chlidonias posts) was: Mislabeled!
With the background info given that became quite unlikely though.Thanks for the link to the article it seems I will have a longer reading session today than planned.
 
Who wants to believe this to be true more than me (and maybe ThylacineAlive :D)?

However, even after reading both articles, all we have to believe that the specimen really came from Australia is a label. The label on my fake Armani shirt doesn't make it real.

Congolese natives identifying a photo of a sauropod does not maketh mokele mbembe real. ;)

Thanks for starting this thread though, because the prospect of them still being alive in the Kimberley is extremely tantalising. Let's hope that we can convince Aunty to protect and photograph a long-beaked echidna if she sees one instead of killing it.
 
I find this very plausible - the implication does seem to be that it hasn't been seen by natives in some decades, so it is entirely possible it hung on in tiny pockets and has become extinct much more recently than previously thought.
 
If you have photos of sauropods, nanoboy, it's time to share!

Unless more evidence came to light, you have to assume something's gotten mislabeled.
 
long-beaked echidna...from Australia

On the one hand, if there's Long-beaked Echidnas out there, there could be Thylacines [or even Thylacoleos].
On the other hand, look at Pygoscelis papua [apologies if I haven't spelt that right]....
 
Did anyone read the paper? I've going through it and the evidence provided is solid. My first thought was as well that it got mislabeled. It happens too often in collections and in some cases even on purpose (Anyone working with series made by Neumann could testify for this) and knowing it happened and proving it are two different things and cause quite some frustration.
Reading the paper it becomes clear we are dealing with a quite known skin which has been well documented since 1901. If it has been mislabeled it has been done on purpose. It cannot be excluded but the case Helgen presents is good.

Anyway very exciting.
 
DDcorvus said:
Did anyone read the paper? I've going through it and the evidence provided is solid. My first thought was as well that it got mislabeled. It happens too often in collections and in some cases even on purpose (Anyone working with series made by Neumann could testify for this) and knowing it happened and proving it are two different things and cause quite some frustration.
Reading the paper it becomes clear we are dealing with a quite known skin which has been well documented since 1901. If it has been mislabeled it has been done on purpose. It cannot be excluded but the case Helgen presents is good.

Anyway very exciting.
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exactly. With my first post in the thread I had thought a mislabelling was most likely; the second article I found provided some better evidence in support of it being real (via aboriginal verbal records); but the actual paper when I found it seems to have quite solid evidence that it is a genuine Australian specimen. The authors do point out there is still the possibility it is mislabelled or had a label switch but it is unlikely.

They also point out that when the specimen was collected there were more wet forest remnants in the area in the gullies etc, and these are now much fewer. I sort of suspect that the species was holding out in these areas and even small scale hunting eventually eliminated them. However I also feel there's a very good chance they are still out there because it is an incredibly rugged area. I also liked the section where it was suggested that western long-beaked echidnas may feed to a large extent on ants and termites and not largely on worms as commonly stated, which makes their survival in Australia more understandable.
 
I was just thinking that perhaps the main threat to long-beaked echidnas if they still occur (apart for the hunting by aborigines) might be foxes. I had a quick google and it seems that while foxes have been recorded in the Kimberley they aren't established there (hence good populations of smaller marsupials and other animals), which is good news.
 
Now why didn't you guys say there are aboriginal cave paintings of the long beaked echidna? I just read the journal paper, and I find that to be the most compelling evidence for it having survived into modern times.
 
nanoboy said:
Now why didn't you guys say there are aboriginal cave paintings of the long beaked echidna? I just read the journal paper, and I find that to be the most compelling evidence for it having survived into modern times.
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the paintings are generally believed to be of a late Pleistocene age (i.e. not modern!) - although that may simply be because that is when long-beaked echidna species were thought to have become extinct. There are also aboriginal cave paintings of animals considered to be diprotodons, thylacoleo, giant kangaroos, etc. That doesn't mean they survived into the recent past. It just means aborigines have been in Australia for tens of thousands of years.
 
nanoboy said:
Now why didn't you guys say there are aboriginal cave paintings of the long beaked echidna? I just read the journal paper, and I find that to be the most compelling evidence for it having survived into modern times.
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We actually thought you would read the paper before jumping to conclusions :p
 
But, a lot of those cave paintings were done yesterday (almost). I remember going on a tour of Kakadu, and the tour guide was saying that the paintings in the cave ranged from the 1960s to hundreds of years ago. Our private joke is that they were really painted a few years ago for tourists like us who wouldn't know better.

Although the aborigines have been here for tens of thousands of years, it does not necessarily mean that those paintings are at least 10,000 years old. Unless organic material was used to make the rock art (like charcoal), I don't believe that the art can be reliably dated. Scientists often say "hey, we know giant kangaroo went extinct 50,000 years ago and here is a painting of giant kangaroo, so it follows logically that is painting is at least as old as that". The other explanation, of course, is that the painting is not that old because the giant kangaroo survived for much much longer.

I am inclined to believe that the echidna rock art is not very old, unless scientific testing says otherwise. Of course, the stuffed specimen - and not the art - is the topic of discussion.
 
Are there any Pleistocene giant echidna subfossils that could be used for DNA analysis to compare with the putative modern Australian sample and see if they are distinct from the New Guinea population?
 
DavidBrown said:
Are there any Pleistocene giant echidna subfossils that could be used for DNA analysis to compare with the putative modern Australian sample and see if they are distinct from the New Guinea population?
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Hell, let's make it simpler: for starters, compare this specimen's DNA with the corresponding New Guinea species' DNA to see if they are one and the same. (That wasn't done for this journal paper, was it?)
 
Helgen tantalisingly hinted at the discovery of the third genus of monotremes surviving into the 20th century in May 2011. Had to wait a year and a half, but well worth it!
 
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