Rare Tree Kangaroo Reappears After Vanishing for 90 Years
Once thought to be extinct, the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo has just been photographed in a remote New Guinea mountain range.
The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo is so rare and elusive that it disappeared for nearly a century and was assumed to be extinct. Now it has not only been spotted, but also photographed for the first time ever.
The unusual monkey-like kangaroo clambers through the trees of the montane forests of New Guinea. It had been seen there only once before by Western scientists, in 1928.
The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo had not been collected, seen, or reported since that first sighting. “It is one of the most poorly known mammals in the world,” says Mark Eldridge, a marsupial biologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Now an amateur botanist from the U.K. has led an expedition into near-impenetrable bamboo forests 5,000 feet high in