New Pygmy Triok discovered after 6000 years (by us!)
Some of you will have seen one or many stories yesterday about two marsupials rediscovered after millennia on New Guinea (for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/05/marsupials-discovered-new-guinea )
The great news is that us mammalwatchers were instrumental in one of these rediscoveries: the pygmy long-tailed possum (triok) that we found on our 2023 trip to West Papua led by Carlos Bocos.
The less great news is that whoever wrote the Australian Museum’s press release thought it was their job to take all the glory for the museum, and not mention the role many others played in this discovery.
As soon as the guys at Klalik grabbed that animal out of a tree we knew we’d seen something pretty special. A few weeks later scientists Kris Helgen and Tim Flannery let Carlos know it was the (very) long lost Dactylonax kambuayai.
A great win for the contributions mammalwatching can make to science.
I felt it was better not to share the news here immediately: I didn’t want to steal the thunder from the scientists before they published their research, particularly when one of them was Tim Flannery who I have had a mammalwatching man crush on since reading Throwim’ Way Leg. (If you haven’t read his book about his work on Papua then you really should).
So it is disappointing that the museum’s PR department didn’t say a word about Carlos or the mammalwatching trip, preferring to claim “local researchers” were involved. They didn’t mention Kris Helgen either who played a leading role in all the research. They even used one of Carlos’s photos and credited it to the museum!
Everyone wants to put a bit of a spin on their own press release I know. But I had imagined that a museum would have been a bit less self-serving and given some of the credit to where it was due. So in my view this is the most unAustralian thing since 1981 when the Australian team prevented New Zealand from winning the cricket by rolling the last ball of the match along the ground.
All this to say I should have shared the news earlier and I’m sorry I didn’t. For those of you who have seen the triok at Klalik you can update your lists with this Lazarus species and flex to your friends that ‘yes you saw the news and yes you saw this mammal already’.
Here is the research paper that Carlos coauthored that does give due credit to his role and our trip.
https://journals.australian.museum/flannery-2026-rec-aust-mus-781-1734/
If any journalists are reading then there is – I believe – a pretty compelling backstory around how our single night at Klalik in 2023 transformed the village, the conservation of the forests surrounding it and led to this new discovery.
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Evan
Incredible! Thanks for sharing!