Philippines Rat Returns From Century of Being Extinct

It is always nice when an extinct animal shows up and announces that rumors of its extinction were exaggerated. In this case, we have the dwarf cloud rat just discovered by an international research team.

Lawrence Heaney, team leader and curator at the Chicago-based Field Museum of Natural History, said the rare dwarf cloud rat was last seen by British scientists some 112 years ago.

He said the rat was dead when the team found it in a canopy of a large tree whose branches were covered by thick moss, orchids and ferns at a national park in Mount Pulag in northern Luzon, the Philippine Daily Inquirer said.

The animal was described as small "with reddish brown fur, a black mask around its large dark eyes, small round ears, a broad and blunt snout and a long tail covered with dark hair," the report said.

"It is the animal whose existence had baffled biologists for so many years," Heaney said.

The animal has been preserved and is being prepared for shipment to Chicago for further studies....

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