Friday, July 15, 2011

Finding the extinct "rainbow toad"

The Sambas Stream toad, or Bornean rainbow toad, has been rediscovered in Borneo by scientists from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak after 87 years of presumed extinction. One wonders how this thing "hid" - it is every bit as colorful as the nickname implies. But hide it did, and this was not one of those cases where someone trips over a discovery. A dedicated team searched long and hard for Ansonia latidisca. Conservation International's Robin Moore commented, ""It is good to know that nature can surprise us when we are close to giving up hope, especially amidst our planet’s escalating extinction crisis." Go look at the photos on the link - they are amazing.

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