Tiny possum and glider thought extinct for 6000 years found in remote West Papua

Really cool. I hope they succeed in establishing native rights to the forest before the logging companies make them extinct again.

Okay, here's a West Papua mystery which the internet needs to become as interested in as I am. It was one of those random things that the Youtube algorithm pushed to me when it only had a few thousand views, and I can't stop thinking about it since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpNKDCo23iM

tl;dr: very passionate young man develops a special interest in the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), and becomes convinced (not without some evidence) that it might still be alive in Western Papua. So he spends two and a half years preparing to Indiana Jones it into the mountains of Western Papua, and the video ends with him saying "I went". Cut to black. No part 2 was ever posted.

Damn, I really want to know how that story finishes. (I fear that "I went" actually meant "I'm going right now", with the intention that he would post part 2 upon his return. Which appears not to have happened.)

Cogito, who does some of the most astounding and in-depth research on global histories, just came out with an incredible documentary about the history of West Papua that changed the way I see it forever. I highly recommend it (and most of Cogito's work. Even his extensive citations are worth spending time with)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWp5904RkJY

This is an area where raising the West Papua can give you 15 years in prison.

Always surprised when I see new animals discovered. Especially in tiny places like Borneo which seems to be the spawn point for new animals god is testing out.

It's incredibly difficult to do research in West Papua which is under very violent occupation by Indonesia, the US, Britain, South Korea, the Netherlands, and France. Foreign journalists and human rights monitors are basically completely barred. Much of this decades long conflict is around the US-owned Grasberg Mine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine

I wouldn't be surprised if more such discoveries were found. Papua is, as best as I can describe it, insane.

So, now that we can observe them alive, how close are they to the reconstructions we've made based on the fossils?

> thought extinct for 6000 years

Does this makes sense for an English speaker ?

C'est vraiment super, mais faisons très attention quand même