A face only a mother could love: The Cuban solenodon is one ugly critter.
SYDNEY: Extinction is forever. Or is it? So-called 'Lazarus' species – named after the biblical character who rose from the dead – are creatures discovered alive after being declared extinct. Here's a look at some species that aren't quite as dead as we thought they were.
COELACANTH
The coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is the archetypical living fossil, thought to have changed little in more than 60 million years. An ugly blue fish, up to 1.8 m long and found in submarine caverns, it was previously known only from fossils and was thought to have disappeared with the dinosaurs. Then, in 1938, Marjorie Courtenay- Latimer of the East London Museum in South Africa found one among specimens trawled up by fishermen. Populations are now known there and in Indonesia.
IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER
The last undisputed sighting of one of the world's largest woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis) was in 1944, but with so many unconfirmed sightings, this is the Elvis of the avian world. Researchers at Cornell University in New York State, USA, caused a stir in 2005 when they said they'd recorded the bird's call and grainy video footage from Arkansas. But they are yet to produce solid evidence that the species persists.
WOLLEMI PINE
Though it looks unremarkable, the Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) turned out to be a million-dollar living fossil – literally; that's how much the first batch of nursery-grown saplings was sold for in 2006. The tree was only known from the fossil record two million years ago, but it was rediscovered in 1994 when national park officer David Noble spotted a tree he didn't recognise while bushwalking in the Wollemi National Park, 150 km northwest of Sydney. The exact location is still a secret, to protect the last few wild individuals from visitors.
THE DINOSAUR ANT
The world's most primitive ant (Prionomyrmex macrops) is thought to have changed little for 60 million years, with a primitive anatomy and relatively relaxed social structure. In 1931, amateur naturalists in Western Australia collected the first living specimens of the wasp-like ant, but unfortunately failed to keep track of the precise location. Try as they might, nobody could find the site again. In 1977, a team from CSIRO, Canberra, were making one last expedition when their vehicle broke down more than 1,000 km from their destination. All seemed lost – until entomologist Bob Taylor stumbled on a Prionomyrmex specimen, and later a colony, just twenty paces from where they had been forced to set up camp.
TAKAHE
With its striking green and blue plumage and large red beak, you'd think it would be hard to lose New Zealand's takahe (Porphyrio hochstetteri). But over-hunting and introduced pests reduced the takahe's numbers so severely that it was thought to be extinct by 1900. But in 1948 Geoffrey Orbell, a doctor and keen bushwalker, found a colony of the birds in the remote Murchison Mountains, in the South Island's Fiordland. They are still vanishingly rare, and New Zealand's Department of Conservation estimates there are only 130 takahe in Fiordland, with another 60 in colonies established on predator-free islands.
LORD HOWE ISLAND STICK INSECT
At up to 12 cm in length, the Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) is a pretty big bug to lose. The jumbo species was once abundant on Lord Howe Island off the NSW coast, its only known habitat. Once black rats were introduced the bug's days were numbered and the last was thought to have died by 1935. Then, in 2001, scientists found a tiny colony of the flightless insects living under a single bush on Ball's Pyramid, a 550-metretall volcanic pinnacle jutting out of the ocean 23 km from their original island home. Thanks to a breeding program at Melbourne Zoo, more than 400 exist in captivity, and there are plans to one day reintroduce the species to Lord Howe Island.
CUBAN SOLENODON
The Cuban solenodon (Solenodon cubanus) hadn't been seen since 1890 when it was rediscovered in 1975. It is one of the world's few venomous mammals. Samuel Turvey, a conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, in Britain, says that, while no one knows exactly how potent solenodon venom is, it can kill mice and perhaps even the solenodons themselves, as animals have been found dead with no apparent fatal wounds after fighting.
