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Soon after scientists landed by helicopter in the mist-shrouded mountains of one of Indonesia's most remote provinces, they stumbled on a primitive egg-laying mammal that simply allowed itself to be picked up and brought to their field camp.Describing a "Lost World" — apparently never visited by humans — members of the team said today that they also saw large mammals that have been hunted to near-extinction elsewhere and discovered dozens of exotic new species of frogs, butterflies and palms.
Minutes after the small team of American, Indonesian and Australian scientists were dropped into a boggy lake bed and set up camp near the mountain range's western summit, they said they encountered a new species of bird — a red-faced and wattled honeyeater.
The next day they saw Berlepsch's Six-wired Bird of Paradise, described by hunters in the 19th century and named for the wires that extend from its head in place of a crest.
They watched in amazement as a male bird performed a courtship dance for a female, shaking the long feathers on his head, and later took the first known photograph of the bird.
Among their most memorable experiences were their encounters with the Long-beaked Echidna, members of the primitive egg-laying group of mammals called the Monotremes, which twice allowed themselves to be picked up and brought to the scientists' camp for observation.
Beehler attributed the lack of fear displayed by the long-snouted spine-covered Echidnas (pronounced eh-KID-na) to the fact that they probably had never come into contact with humans.
But other animals, like the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo, an arboreal jungle-dweller previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction, were much more shy
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posted 07 February 2006 10:32 PM
