For 62 years, the only proof that Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna ever existed was a single specimen, recovered in 1961 from the Cyclops Mountains of New Guinea. In the interim, this quill-covered, egg-laying mammal (named for the British naturalist David Attenborough) vanished from the scientific radar.
After all that time, you might think, it would’ve been perfectly reasonable to presume the creature extinct. But then, in 2007, an expedition stumbled upon evidence of its survival: “nose pokes” in the soft rainforest ground. Another decade and a half went by before researchers from Oxford University captured one on camera in November 2023. The echidna, as it turns out, still lives.
The species wasn’t extinct after all, but rather a “lost species” — one that’s gone unseen for years or decades, but that scientists haven’t given up on. So, how many lost species are there, and which are most intriguing — and most wanted — among scientists?
