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The two animals were last seen in the last century.
They were thought to be extinct - until now.
But one after the other and from the beginning: Sometime between 1843 and 1848, the German geologist and naturalist Carl ALM Schwaner found a gray-brown bird during an expedition in what was then East India.
In 1850 the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte described this black-browed mouse thrush.
He then gave the animal to a museum collection.
Nobody had seen the bird in the wild since then.
Until the end of last year - 172 years later - Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan accidentally discovered a specimen in the province of South Kalimantan in the Indonesian part of Borneo.
Not knowing the species, the villagers took a picture of him and gave it to local bird watchers.
They contacted ornithologists in Indonesia who finally confirmed:
The find is the black-browed
mouse
thrush,
Malacocincla perspicillata,
believed to be extinct
After Muhammad Suranto and Muhammad Rizky Fauzan took photos of the black-browed mouse thrush, they released him
Source: M Suranto
“It feels surreal that we found a species of bird that experts thought was extinct.
When we found him, we didn't expect him to be that special.
We thought it was just a bird that we had simply never seen before, ”said Muhammad Rizky Fauzan, describing his sensational find in a press release by the bird protection organization BirdLife International.
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Where the bird originally came from has long been a mystery.
Many researchers assumed that it came from Java.
But the Swiss ornithologist Johann Büttikofer pointed out in 1895 that Schwaner was staying in Borneo at the time.
The recent find finally confirms that the black-browed mouse thrush actually lives there.
The ornithologist Panji Gusti Akbar from the Indonesian bird protection organization Birdpacker and his colleagues describe the animal rediscovery in the journal “BirdingASIA”.
This looks a little different than the specimen in the museum: Its iris, beak and feet had faded in color over time.
The black-browed mouse thrush found by Carl Schwaner is now in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands
Source: Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Little is known so far about the bird, which researchers often refer to as "the greatest mystery of Indonesian ornithology"
"It is sobering that Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' has not even been published and that the now-extinct pigeon was the most common bird in the world when the black-browed mousebird was first and last seen," says co-study author Ding Li Yong by BirdLife Asia.
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According to the ornithologists, the find shows how little Indonesia's bird life has been explored so far.
It gives hope to find more previously undiscovered animal species in Southeast Asia.
However, the researchers also point out that the black-browed mouse thrush is threatened with extinction, since its habitat for palm oil plantations is being cut down on a large scale.
Because of the corona pandemic, the ornithologists have not yet been able to drive into the area themselves.
As soon as that is possible again, they want to go to the region to look for more specimens of the black-browed mouse thrush and thus to learn more about the bird.
James Dorey of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia fared comparatively better in this regard.
The biologist did not want to
admit
that the wild bee
Pharohylaeus lactiferus
may have become extinct and was able to search for his protégé himself.
He scoured the insect's favorite forage plants in almost 250 different areas in the states of New South Wales and Queensland - and found what he was looking for:
The researcher discovered three populations of the bee species, which has been missing for almost 100 years
May we introduce: Pharohylaeus lactiferus
Source: dpa / James Dorey Photography
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In total, only six specimens of
Pharohylaeus lactiferus
have ever been found.
It was last documented by researchers in Queensland in 1923.
At that time they had discovered three male specimens in the highlands of the Atherton Tablelands in northeast Australia.
In the journal "Journal of Hymenoptera Research" Dorey described the bee, which occurs only in Australia.
Accordingly, it is only nine to eleven millimeters in size, but robust.
Her black body has distinctive white markings on the face and front part.
According to the biologist, it is still unclear
whether
P. lactiferus is
currently threatened with extinction.
One thing is certain, however: it is very rare because its habitat is highly fragmented and it specializes in only a few food plants.
In addition, deforestation and bush fires are increasingly restricting their living space.
Source: dpa / James Dorey Photography
If we are to understand and protect these wonderful Australian species, it is imperative that we step up bio-surveillance and conservation efforts.
James Dorey, a biologist at Flinders University
According to a study from 2012, 40 percent of all forests in Australia have been cleared since European colonization.
Most of the remaining areas are fragmented and dismantled.
Genetic studies should show how the population of the resurrected wild bee is actually doing.