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| Armoured Mistfrog Rediscovered |
| Several frogs found in creek | |
Sept. 11, 2008 -- A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia's tropical north, researchers said Thursday.
The 1.5 inch-long Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state.
But two months ago, a doctoral student at James Cook University in Townsville conducting research on another frog species in Queensland stumbled across what appeared to be several Armoured Mistfrogs in a creek, said professor Ross Alford, head of a research team on threatened frogs at the university.
Conrad Hoskin, a researcher at The Australian National University in Canberra who has been studying the evolutionary biology of north Queensland frogs for the past 10 years, conducted DNA tests on tissue samples from the frogs and determined they were the elusive Armoured Mistfrog.
Alford's group got the results on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency also confirmed Hoskin's findings.
"A lot of us were starting to believe it had gone extinct, so to discover it now is amazing," Hoskin said. "It means some of the other species that are missing could potentially just be hidden away along some of the streams up there."
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| 'Presumed Extinct' list cut from seven to six |  |
An article in the Courier Mail, Sept 11 2008, states that this frog was found in dry eucalypt forest, well outside the rainforest country it was thought to inhabitat.
Robert Puschendorf's find has cut the presumed extinct Queensland frog species from seven to six in one stroke. Professor Alford said that it was critical that the State Govenment moved quickly to protect the frog's habitat and the national park had to be of a reasonable size.
Courier Mail 11 Sept 2008
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| Urgent move to protect habitat | |
The State Govenment is moving urgently to protect the habitat of the Armoured Mistfrog - found again in far north Queensland after "disappearing" for 17 years.
Substainability Minister Andrew McNamara says the Carbine Plateau, where it was found, was due to be transfered to national park status in several years. McNamara has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to speed things up.
Courier Mail 27 Sept 2008
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