Then, in 2021, researchers at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center announced that they had managed to spot and photograph another specimen.Īt just 100 grams in weight, the diminutive Bornean Rajah scops-owl ( Otus brookii brookii)- which owes its common and scientific names to James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak-is directly related to the somewhat less elusive and therefore better studied Sumatran Raja scops-owl. Since then, nothing, so the bird had been considered extinct for decades. We know this thanks to a single specimen sighted in 1892. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.Īt the end of the 19th century, the mountain rainforests of the island of Borneo, in the Malay archipelago, were still inhabited by a subspecies of Rajah scops-owl. The diminutive Bornean Rajah scops-owl, considered a subspecies related to the Sumatran Raja scops-owl, has not been sighted since 1892. This was recently verified by comparing the genetic material of the new specimens with that of the specimens collected by nineteenth-century naturalists and present in museum collections. Two breeding pairs were transferred to the Melbourne Zoo, where by 2012 there were already 9,000 descendants ready for reintroduction onto the island, once it was confirmed that the Dryococelus from the islet was the same species as Lord Howe’s. In 2001, an expedition managed to locate 24 live specimens. However, in 1964 some climbers found the corpse of a presumed specimen on Ball’s Pyramid, a steep island 23 kilometres from Lord Howe Island. Almost immediately, rats from the whaling ships reached the mainland and began to decimate the population of this imposing phasmid, some 15 centimetres long and weighing 25 grams.īy 1930 it was assumed that this stick insect had been exterminated. The Lord Howe Island stick insect ( Dryococelus australis ) was discovered in the nineteenth century when the island that gives it its name, located in the Tasman Sea some 600 kilometres off the east coast of Australia, became a whaling settlement. Lord Howe Island stick insectīy 1930 it was assumed that this stick insect had been exterminated. The new tortoise, given the name Fernanda, is a female of about 50 years of age and currently resides at the Galapagos National Park Tortoise Centre. ![]() But a comparison of its DNA with that of the museum specimen and thirteen other Galapagos giant tortoise species confirmed that it was indeed the Fernandina Island Galapagos tortoise ( Chelonoidis phantasticus ). It was such an unexpected find that even those responsible for the discovery questioned whether it was really another specimen of the mythical species or a tortoise of one of the species present on the neighbouring islands that had accidentally reached the Fernandina coast. The mystery was finally resolved in 2019 when another giant tortoise was discovered. The discovery of turtle droppings on the island, first in 1964 and again in 2014, kept the intrigue alive. The presence of these turtles on Fernandina was never recorded again, so for many years it was thought to have been a freak of nature, an exceptional specimen that had been carried to the island by a big storm, or been abandoned there by sailors or the inhabitants of a neighbouring island. After being captured and killed, the specimen became part of the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where it has remained ever since. When explorer Rollo Beck landed on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos archipelago in 1906, he discovered a fantastical creature: a giant land tortoise whose voluminous saddle-shaped carapace seemed an invitation to riders. ![]() ![]() In 1906, explorer Rollo Beck discovered a particular new species of giant land tortoise, the Fernandina, named after the Galapagos island. Fernandina Island Galapagos giant tortoise This photo gallery presents some of the most remarkable resurrections. These animals, like Lazarus, are resurrected before our very eyes. From time to time, nature challenges biologists and naturalists with the reappearance of creatures that disappeared centuries ago, condemned by some natural catastrophe or classified as fantastical.
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