Two 'Extinct' Mammals Species Have Been Discovered in New Guinea

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0:19Rowan Hooper:Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels?

0:21Tim Flannery:It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton. For this day. Welcome to The World, the Universe and Us from New Scientist. I'm Dr. Roan Hooper. Now, two marsupial species, including one that's a completely new genus of gliding mammal, have been found alive in New Guinea after it's thought they'd become extinct at least 6 ,000 years ago. Now, the discovery is significant enough that one biologist we spoke to said it was more important than finding a living thylacine in Tasmania, a living Tasmanian tiger. One of the new species is our marsupial glider. The other is the pygmy long-fingered possum.

1:01Tim Flannery:And we're going to find out more about this discovery today. To talk us through it, I'm joined by the leader of the team that confirmed this discovery, Tim Flannery at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Tim, thanks for coming on the show. Can you maybe start by telling us how this research started? Were there rumours that there were these unknown species in the jungle?

1:20Rowan Hooper:Well, the research really started back in 1999 when a colleague of mine, who's very sadly deceased, a man called Ken Applin, was examining archaeological remains from a cave deposit in West Papua. And he came across two tiny fragments of bone. I mean, really, they would barely fit on the nail of your little finger, these two bits of bone. And he said on the basis of those two bits of bone, one belonged to a gliding possum of a subfamily, which was totally unknown from New Guinea otherwise. And the other one was a very distinctive species of long-fingered possum. And at the time he showed them to me, he was a dear friend of mine, we did our PhDs together and all of the rest, and Ken was a genius.

2:03Rowan Hooper:He was one of the very few geniuses I've ever known in my life. He showed them to me. I was dubious. I could see what he was saying, but I thought, we've got two fragments from a cave full of hundreds of thousands of bone fragments, so what are the chances? So I filed it away in the back of my mind. And then probably 12 years later, 12 to 15 years later, Ken was passing through the University of Papua New Guinea, and he stopped in to examine the teaching collection, which is a sort of a sacrificial collection. And among the things there that students, you know, do all sorts of gruesome things to, was a specimen that looked different to him.

2:42Rowan Hooper:So he borrowed it, brought it down to Sydney and realized that in fact, it was a specimen of his long fingered possum, which had somehow got into a teaching collection in a different country. We don't really understand how, but it's what happened. So that was the beginning of the journey. And for the second species, the first real evidence we had that it may still be alive arrived a week after Ken's death, tragic death in 2022, when a colleague of mine, Chris Helgen, was sent a photograph by a plantation worker of a really unusual animal. It was one of about 50 photos sent, the only one of interest, really.

3:20Rowan Hooper:And we put our heads together and we thought, maybe could this possibly be Ken's gliding possum? And the thought really was left there. I was very lucky later in that year, I went to West Papua to do some research, talked to people who seemed to know about that animal. I then sent a student to have a look a year later. Still no specimen, but interesting conversations with the locals. And then finally, a year after that, a local hunter sent a photograph to the student I'd sent there of an animal that he'd hunted. And it was the same thing as what was in the photo. A much better picture though of an adult animal and we could very clearly see what it was.

3:59Rowan Hooper:So that was when we really knew that we were onto something, that both of these animals were living. In the meantime, we'd got some more, saw some more photographs of the long-fingered possum as well, taken by mammal watchers in an area of West Papua. So by then we had good evidence that both of these animals thought extinct for 6 ,000 years were alive and well, or alive at least in the forests of West Papua.

4:21Tim Flannery:Can you tell us a bit about the forests and this region of West Papua? Because you mentioned plantations, but I wondered if maybe it's a bit less developed perhaps, and maybe it was a good sanctuary for these very rare species, remnant species.

4:34Rowan Hooper:Look, the area we're talking about is what's known as the bird's head of the island of New Guinea, that very distinctive peninsula at the western end. And geologically, it's very distinctive. It is a fragment of the continent of Australia that became separated, who knows, 70, 50, 60 million years ago, somewhere around that time, and has been in intermittent contact with Australia. But geologically, it is part of Australia. The rest of New Guinea is quite different in origin, oceanic island arc and so forth, at least for the central ranges. What perplexed me was that it was the very first part of New Guinea that was ever explored by biologists.

5:14Rowan Hooper:The first mammal ever described from the island of New Guinea was found on the Vogelkop in 1825. The very first expedition into the mountains of New Guinea occurred on the Vogelkop. So it seemed that it should be well explored. But the more we looked into it, the more we realized that in fact it was very badly explored and that the discovery of the snow mountains with their glaciers in the early 20th century and the opening up of Port Moresby about the same time really drew the biological explorers away into other parts of New Guinea. And they forgot about this Vogelkopp. They just thought it was an ordinary part of New Guinea.

5:51Rowan Hooper:But far from it. The other thing to understand about the region is that it's well serviced by ports and connections with the rest of Indonesia. Therefore, it is being disproportionately impacted by activities from mining to logging to city development and all the rest. So it's arguably under more threat than the rest of New Guinea. So that's kind of, in a nutshell, sort of the place. The specific habitat of these animals, however, is very different.

6:18Tim Flannery:Okay. Well, maybe tell us a bit about the animals. Can you describe them for us? Let's start with the glider.

6:24Rowan Hooper:Well, the gliding possum is an extraordinarily photogenic creature. It looks like a little lepilema, you know, those very cute lemurs from Madagascar. It's got long fur. It's got beautiful eyes, a little short face, lives in tree hollows. One of the photos we have is of it leaning out of a tree hollow on its elbow, sort of looking out like this, you know, the people looking in. It weighs about 300 grams. So it's not a small animal, but it's, you know, not overly large either. It's about half the size of the greater glider in Australia, which is its nearest relative. and it appears to be dependent, as the greater glider is, on tree hollows developed in the oldest and largest trees in the rainforest and therefore is of particular concern when it comes to logging.

7:07Tim Flannery:And so it literally glides between the trees like flying squirrels, does it?

7:12Rowan Hooper:Yes, it has a gliding membrane very much like the greater glider so that membrane joins at the elbow and runs down to the hind leg, hind foot. It's got a long and fluffy tail like the greater glider but unlike the greater glider, the tail of our ringtail glider, our new species, is strongly prehensile. And from what local people tell us, it's a great leaper as well as a great glider. So it's sort of perhaps a bit less specialised in that regard than the Australian greater glider. What it eats, we're told various things by local people, but some people claim it eats a lot of sap, which would be highly unusual for one of the gliding possum family, but we shall see.

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8:24Tim Flannery:And you mentioned learning about it from local people what does the indigenous community know about this animal?

8:31Rowan Hooper:Well the first thing we were told is that people who knew it in areas that have been logged said it's just no longer there in those areas but it still survives in some places where the forest is intact The way people regard the animal varies of course, across the Vogelcock. For some people, it's just a rather unusual animal of no particular, little particular interest. In other areas, it's considered an extremely sacred animal. And one of the problems that we've had, in fact, learning about it, is that in its great stronghold in the southern Tambrow area, where there's these gigantic cowrie trees, you know, they're so big, four people can't put their arms around them.

9:10Rowan Hooper:In that area, it is considered so sacred, people won't even mention its name in public. It's very difficult to get information about the animal at all. Knowledge about it is involved with the highest level of initiation that these people go through. And those communities only made contact with the outside world in the 1960s. So they're still extremely traditional communities.

9:33Tim Flannery:Is that because of its ability to fly that it's considered sacred?

9:38Rowan Hooper:No, it seems to be more detailed biological knowledge than that. So some people on the margins of that area have told us the reason that they respect it and won't harm it in any way is that it's a monogamous animal, strictly monogamous, so they mate for life. And the pair only have a single young per year. And when young men are going through their initiation ceremonies, this is held up as a sort of a virtue, a virtuous way of life that young men might want to emulate. Wow. So have a small family and just one wife and look after them all well. And so it's also possible, and we haven't been able to confirm this, but it may do something akin to gardening.

10:22Rowan Hooper:It may trim vines and things that are growing between its roost trees and its feed trees, because they're different species. So again, a rather human-like behaviour.

10:32Tim Flannery:I think this is a great example of the amount of ecological knowledge that Indigenous people have, which of course they have. They live much closer to nature than most of the rest of us. But I think that their ecological knowledge is often maybe disregarded. But as you say, once you've started talking to local people, you find out they know incredible amounts about the animals around them.

10:56Rowan Hooper:Look, they are the great professors of biology in my experience. And I'm deeply humbled because they gave me my career. You know, when I started working in New Guinea 46 years ago, So it was the old men and women in the village who knew the fauna that I was interested in, who took me under their wing and looked after me and taught me what they knew. And so, you know, part of the reason I'm back in New Guinea still at the age of 70 is to give a little bit back. I'm trying to work with some of those communities, even though the elders are long gone, you know, in the hope that we can get some security for them.

11:29Rowan Hooper:You know, one of the problems the communities face is that Indonesia, like Australia, has this vacant crown land idea of land tenure. And like Australia, they've recently introduced a mechanism by which local people can claim back the ownership of their forests. So we are hopeful that we're going to work with those communities to gain ownership of the forest, develop a sustainable pathway for development at the same time that they protect those incredibly important animals.

11:57Tim Flannery:Okay, let's move on to the long-fingered possum. Can you tell us about that one?

12:03Rowan Hooper:Yeah, well, it weighs about 200 grams, so it's a little bit smaller. It'd sit in the palm of your hand, that one. It's brightly striped, black and white. It has this extraordinary tail with a white tip on it that it uses to counterbalance, we think. That possum seems to live on the ground, which is unusual for a small possum like that. It has very, very powerful incisors that allow it to rip open wood. and one finger on its hand, the fourth digit, so that one, is twice as long at least as the other digits. It's enormously long. And it uses that to fish grubs out from the burrows in the wood that it feeds from.

12:42Rowan Hooper:It's amazing. And I have never seen it move, but people who have seen it move through the forest tell me it moves a bit like a Colugo, you know, one of the lemurs leaping across the ground on its hind feet. Wow. And using the tail to balance. Yes. Amazing. Yes.

12:57Tim Flannery:And perhaps maybe you can explain why it's such an important discovery, these two animals, that it's been described as more important than finding a living thylacine.

13:07Rowan Hooper:Well, it was certainly more astonishing to me than finding a living thylacine. I mean, the reason being that the thylacine's been extinct for less than a century and is fairly well known. But these animals, we found fossils of them in Australia dating back 280 ,000 years. And fossils in West Park were dating back 6 ,000 to 7 ,500 years. there was no indication that they were still extant and yet here they are you know they're like i mean diprotodons and the other australian megafauna are huge and we'd be surprised to find one of them but really these animals are in the same category they they went extinct presumably during the ice age in australia and um there they are surviving on an island to the north this vogel cop island that's part of australia a bit like the thylacine survived in tasmania you know on an island to the south of the australian continent and there's two of them that's the Another amazing thing.

13:56Rowan Hooper:I mean, one Lazarus species will be enough, but here we are announcing two.

14:00Tim Flannery:Yeah. I suppose it's too early to say, is it what we know about the population of these things? Do we know anything about the sort of genetic diversity within each species?

14:09Rowan Hooper:Look, it's way, way too early. We're still just trying to map distributions and habitats for both.

14:16Tim Flannery:Yeah.

14:17Rowan Hooper:They're rare animals. You can imagine that biological explanation started in this area in 1825 and it's taken to 2026 to locate them. They're not common animals and they are protected by taboo, which we're very respectful of in some areas. So it'll take us some time to develop that broader overview of where the populations are and how vulnerable they are. But certainly the warning signs went up for me when I realised that the glider was dependent upon tree hollows in large trees.

14:49Tim Flannery:Yeah, because those trees are particularly a threat from logging, I presume.

14:54Rowan Hooper:Well, they are. In fact, you know, in Australia, the greater glider is threatened by logging and the same is true in the Vogelkopf. So, yes, that's one thing we do need to watch and make sure that there are some reserved lands where this animal can thrive.

15:09Tim Flannery:Well, I was going to ask about that because you said they're protected by taboo, but is there any sort of legal protection or are there reserve areas that we can defend?