{"id":337677,"date":"2026-03-13T19:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/337677\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T19:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T19:01:09","slug":"the-jungle-indiana-jones-and-his-lazarus-revival-of-lost-marsupials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/337677\/","title":{"rendered":"The jungle Indiana Jones and his \u2018Lazarus revival\u2019 of lost marsupials"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep in the rainforest of the Bird\u2019s Head Peninsula, the remotest corner of the mysterious island of New Guinea, the tribesman explained that Tim Flannery\u2019s quest may be nearing an end. <\/p>\n

The clan leader had learnt that Flannery, known as the Indiana Jones of Australian science, was in pursuit of perhaps the greatest prize of his four-decade career. \u201cHe told us: \u2018Look it\u2019s so sacred that most people won\u2019t even mention its name,\u2019\u201d Flannery recalled. \u201cHe told us enough of the story to make sure we didn\u2019t ask any more questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Flannery would not be stalled, however. He has faced deadly arrows aimed by enraged tribesmen and wrestled a 3m snake invading his bed on a remote Pacific island, during a career in which he has uncovered dinosaur fossils and discovered 16 mammal species and subspecies. These included Papua New Guinea\u2019s fearsome monkey-faced bat that has a wingspan of more than 1.5m.<\/p>\n

\"Pygmy<\/p>\n

The pygmy long-fingered possum was one of the two species re-discovered<\/p>\n

CARLOS BOCOS<\/p>\n

The veteran explorer of the island, which lies to the north of Australia and is more than three times the size of the UK, has now helped achieve a rare scientific feat: the re-discovery, deep in the island\u2019s rainforests, of two of the world\u2019s strangest marsupials thought to have vanished 6,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

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One is the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai), a small, striped animal with one exceptionally long digit on each hand. The other is the ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis), which nests in holes in trees and uses its long, strong tail to grip branches and vines as it silently glides around the rainforest, using its body as a wing.<\/p>\n

The discoveries, reported in two scientific papers co-authored by Flannery, make them rare examples of animals that are brought back to life: examples of the so-called \u201cLazarus species\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Tous<\/p>\n

A ring-tailed glider<\/p>\n

ARMAN MUHARMANSYAH<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s pretty much unprecedented,\u201d Flannery, a zoologist at the Australian Museum told The Times on Friday. Both were found in one of the island\u2019s most inaccessible, little-known pockets: Bird\u2019s Head Peninsula, also known as the Vogelkop, in the Indonesian province of West Papua.<\/p>\n

The scientist made multiple journeys into the region, seeking confirmation from tribes people of the existence of the animals but, in the case of the ring-tailed glider \u2014 a possum-like flying mammal that uses its tail as a rudder \u2014 he met a wall of silence.<\/p>\n

Working off just a single photograph snapped years earlier by a forest worker of a strange creature on a riverside tree branch \u2014 wrongly identified by others as a loris, a small nocturnal primate native to southeast Asia \u2014 researchers entered the forests in 2019 and attempted to find tribes who might help them. <\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/p>\n

The clan leader he met led Flannery\u2019s team to meet tribespeople familiar with the glider, an animal they venerated. \u201cIts lifestyle, including its monogamy and limited number of young, are taught as an ideal arrangement to which young men should aspire,\u201d the researchers said in their paper. <\/p>\n

Finally, a ring-tailed glider shot by local hunters as it glided across a tree canopy was photographed, helping to prove the animals had survived despite 6,000 years of presumed extinction. Even today, Flannery and his team will not reveal the exact location of the tribespeople who know the glider, fearing international wildlife trackers will plunder the remaining animals.<\/p>\n

It was also photography that led researchers to the re-discovery of the second Lazarus species: the pygmy long-fingered possum which fossil records had previously indicated had lived in Australia about 300,000 years ago but vanished during the Ice Age. It was last known to have lived in the western regions of New Guinea until about 6,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

A painting of the pygmy long-fingered possum<\/p>\n

2026 FLANNERY\/APLIN\/BOCOS\/KOUNGOULOS<\/p>\n

In Flannery\u2019s words, the \u201cuncanny\u201d boldly striped black and white creature has \u201cvery powerful jaws for ripping open logs \u2014 it listens for insect larvae burrowing their way through timber, and when it hears insects, it uses its teeth to rip a hole in the timber\u201d.<\/p>\n

Its re-discovery was established through photographs taken by local and independent researchers, fossil fragments and a museum specimen that was collected in 1992 but misidentified. \u201cIt\u2019s worthwhile just sitting back a second and marvelling at this wonderful world of ours when there are still such animals to be discovered,\u201d said Flannery. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A ring-tailed glider in the New Guinea forest<\/p>\n

MARNEKS MJAM<\/p>\n

It is not lost on the scientist that the voracious felling of New Guinea\u2019s rainforests for palm oil plantations uncovered the gliders that had remained hidden for so long, protected by the tribes that considered them sacred. The 2015 picture of a ringtail glider that set researchers on their trail was taken by a worker preparing to fell the high trees where the animals live.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt tells us it\u2019s not too late to save the world\u2019s bio-diversity but this is really the moment to start acting,\u201d said Flannery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep in the rainforest of the Bird\u2019s Head Peninsula, the remotest corner of the mysterious island of New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-337677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}