Team led by Oxford biologist discovers long-lost mammal: See video of long-beaked echidna

For more than 60 years, many biologists had begun to wonder if a strange, egg-laying mammal named after British naturalist David Attenborough would ever be seen again.

Signs of the mysterious creature known as Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (scientific name: Zaglossus attenboroughi) had appeared here and there in Indonesian mountains where it was known to roam: holes poked into the ground made by its long nose; witness reports from members of the local village.

But catching a glimpse of the elusive nocturnal creature to prove that it had not gone extinct had become near impossible.

That is until a team led by Oxford University scientists recently captured the first photographic evidence confirming the survival of the ancient species of echidna.

And it almost didn't happen.

The team spent almost all of the four-week expedition to the Cyclops Mountains in Indonesia setting up trail cameras that caught no sign of the echidna − until the very last day. The photographic evidence that the team eagerly shared in a news release on Oxford's website serves as the first time since 1961 that this particular species of echidna has been seen, according to the researchers.

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What is an echidna?

To the untrained eye, echidnas may appear not unlike a hedgehog or platypus, which is no surprise:

James Kempton, a biologist from Oxford University who headed the multinational team on the monthlong expedition, described the animals as having "the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole" on the expedition's website.

It's that hybrid appearance that lends the echidna its name, which comes from a Greek mythological creature that is a half-woman, half-serpent, Kempton said.

As one of five species of monotreme, echidnas are part of a bizarre group of primitive mammals similar to the platypus that can lay eggs. Monotremes diverged from the common ancestors of other mammals around 200 million years ago.

The long-snouted echidna species named for Attenborough is different from another short-beaked echidna found throughout Australia and lowland New Guinea. And unlike its counterpart, this species of echidna was long feared extinct.

Until now, the only evidence of this species was a scientific recording by a Dutch botanist in 1961, according to the conservation group EDGE of Existence.

Even with the recent discovery, Kempton said that so few people have seen the animals that little is known about their ecology or behavior.

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Shrimp out of water

During the expedition, the team also discovered several new species, including a tree-dwelling shrimp and two new species of frog.

Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, lead entomologist for the expedition, called the shrimp discovery "a remarkable departure from the typical seaside habitat for these animals."

"We believe that the high level of rainfall in the Cyclops Mountains means the humidity is great enough for these creatures to live entirely on land," he added.

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Perilous journey to find echidna in Cyclops Mountains

In June and July, Kempton led a team traversing previously unexplored stretches of the Cyclops Mountains, a treacherous mountain range on the island of New Guinea.

The remote terrain of the northeastern Indonesia province of Papua yielded several discoveries in addition to the evidence of the echidna, but the findings didn't come easy.

Kempton said the team spent years building a relationship with the local community of Yongsu Sapari, a village on the north coast of the Cyclops Mountains. With the guidance of the Indonesian nonprofit Yayasan Pelayanan Papua Nenda (Yappenda), the team ventured toward the top of the mountain along inhospitable terrain.

Along the way, they encountered venomous snakes and spiders, as well as exhausting heat.

But those hazards may have been the least of their troubles.

During one of the trips to a previously unknown cave system, a sudden earthquake forced the team to evacuate. One of the team members broke his arm in two places, another contracted malaria and a third had a leech attached to his eye for a day-and-a-half before it was finally removed at a hospital.

Yet despite the travails, Kempton couldn't help but romanticize the rainforest habitat.

"I think the landscape is magical, at once enchanting and dangerous, like something out of a Tolkien book," Kempton said in a statement. "In this environment, the camaraderie between the expedition members was fantastic, with everyone helping to keep up morale."

Along the way, the team deployed more than 80 trail cameras to record signs of the echidna, animals that are notoriously difficult to find since they are nocturnal and live in burrows. It wasn't until the last day, however, that the last images on the final memory card showed three photos of the elusive mammal.

The results were uploaded to the website bioRxiv ahead of submission to a journal for peer review.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com