Biologists have confirmed the existence of a 200-million-year-old species of egg-laying mammal, that has been assumed to be extinct. Suspected footage of the long-beaked echidna (uh-kid-nuh) was initially captured in 2023 by Oxford University during an expedition to the Cyclops Mountains, a rugged rainforest in Indonesia. By combining modern technology with indigenous knowledge, researchers recently confirmed that the long-beaked echidna had been found, the species hadn’t been recorded for more than 60 years, when a dead specimen was found in the region. The long-beaked echidna is one of just five egg-laying mammals in existence today, including the platypus and two other species of modern echidna, the researchers said.
These mammals are the “sole living representatives” of monotreme — or egg-laying — lineage that diverged from therians, or marsupials and placental mammals, more than 200 million years ago, according to the paper. There are currently more than 2,000 “so-called lost species” — species that have gone undocumented for sustained periods of time.
