long-beaked echidna.......from Australia?

Very exiting although my first respons (before reading Chlidonias posts) was: Mislabeled!
With the background info given that became quite unlikely though.Thanks for the link to the article it seems I will have a longer reading session today than planned.

 

Who wants to believe this to be true more than me (and maybe ThylacineAlive )?

However, even after reading both articles, all we have to believe that the specimen really came from Australia is a label. The label on my fake Armani shirt doesn't make it real.

Congolese natives identifying a photo of a sauropod does not maketh mokele mbembe real.

Thanks for starting this thread though, because the prospect of them still being alive in the Kimberley is extremely tantalising. Let's hope that we can convince Aunty to protect and photograph a long-beaked echidna if she sees one instead of killing it.

 

If you have photos of sauropods, nanoboy, it's time to share!

Unless more evidence came to light, you have to assume something's gotten mislabeled.

 

long-beaked echidna...from Australia

On the one hand, if there's Long-beaked Echidnas out there, there could be Thylacines [or even Thylacoleos].
On the other hand, look at Pygoscelis papua [apologies if I haven't spelt that right]....

 

Did anyone read the paper? I've going through it and the evidence provided is solid. My first thought was as well that it got mislabeled. It happens too often in collections and in some cases even on purpose (Anyone working with series made by Neumann could testify for this) and knowing it happened and proving it are two different things and cause quite some frustration.
Reading the paper it becomes clear we are dealing with a quite known skin which has been well documented since 1901. If it has been mislabeled it has been done on purpose. It cannot be excluded but the case Helgen presents is good.

Anyway very exciting.

 

double posting

 

Now why didn't you guys say there are aboriginal cave paintings of the long beaked echidna? I just read the journal paper, and I find that to be the most compelling evidence for it having survived into modern times.

 

We actually thought you would read the paper before jumping to conclusions

 

But, a lot of those cave paintings were done yesterday (almost). I remember going on a tour of Kakadu, and the tour guide was saying that the paintings in the cave ranged from the 1960s to hundreds of years ago. Our private joke is that they were really painted a few years ago for tourists like us who wouldn't know better.

Although the aborigines have been here for tens of thousands of years, it does not necessarily mean that those paintings are at least 10,000 years old. Unless organic material was used to make the rock art (like charcoal), I don't believe that the art can be reliably dated. Scientists often say "hey, we know giant kangaroo went extinct 50,000 years ago and here is a painting of giant kangaroo, so it follows logically that is painting is at least as old as that". The other explanation, of course, is that the painting is not that old because the giant kangaroo survived for much much longer.

I am inclined to believe that the echidna rock art is not very old, unless scientific testing says otherwise. Of course, the stuffed specimen - and not the art - is the topic of discussion.

 

Are there any Pleistocene giant echidna subfossils that could be used for DNA analysis to compare with the putative modern Australian sample and see if they are distinct from the New Guinea population?

 

Hell, let's make it simpler: for starters, compare this specimen's DNA with the corresponding New Guinea species' DNA to see if they are one and the same. (That wasn't done for this journal paper, was it?)

 

No it wasn't done.

 

Helgen tantalisingly hinted at the discovery of the third genus of monotremes surviving into the 20th century in May 2011. Had to wait a year and a half, but well worth it!