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'Lost' Gremlin-Like Primates Found In Indonesia

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Nov 18, 2008 10:58 pm US/Pacific

'Lost' Gremlin-Like Primates Found In Indonesia

Species Of Pygmy Tarsiers Considered Extinct Rediscovered By Texas A&M Anthropologists

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Texas A&M) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: The pygmy tarsiers possess fingers with claws instead of nails, which Gursky-Doyen says is a distinguishing feature of this species, and distinguishes them from nearly all other primates which have nails and not claws.
Sharon Gursky

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A team led by a Texas A&M University anthropologist has found a group of primates not seen alive in 85 years.

The pygmy tarsiers, furry creatures about the size of a small mouse and weighing less than 2 ounces, have not been observed alive since they were last collected for a museum in 1921, according to a press release from Texas A&M.

Several scientists believed they were extinct until two Indonesian scientists trapping rats in the highlands of Sulawesi accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier in 2000.

Sharon Gursky-Doyen, working with one of her graduate students, Nanda Grow, and a team of locals trapped three of the nocturnal creatures in Indonesia in August 2008.

The pygmy tarsiers possess fingers with claws instead of nails, which Gursky-Doyen says is a distinguishing feature of this species, and distinguishes them from nearly all other primates which have nails and not claws.

The claws may be an adaptation to the mossy environment, she believes.

Gursky-Doyen and Grow are drafting a paper that represents the first behavioral and ecological data on this living population of pygmy tarsiers.

Whatever else happens, Gursky-Doyen says she hopes the tarsiers won't slip back into oblivion. Hopefully, she says, now that the Indonesian government knows where this species resides, it will protect them from the encroaching development that is occurring in the range of this species within Lore Lindu National Park.

"There are still primates waiting to be discovered in Indonesia," she says. "Not all have been seen, heard and described."