Scientists discover dozens of new species in Indonesian jungle

Two long-beaked Echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal, simply allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied, he said, noting that the enigmatic animals were probably so unwary because they never had seen people before.

The December 2005 expedition, organised by the us-based environmental organisation Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Swift Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Global Environment Project Institute.

Papua, the scene of a decades-long separatist rebellion that has left an estimated 100,000 people dead, is one of Indonesia’s most remote provinces, geographically and politically, and access by foreigners is tightly restricted.

The 11-member team needed six permits before they could legally fly by helicopter to an open, boggy lakebed surrounded by forests near the range’s western summit, where they set up camp at an altitude of 1,500 metres.