A giant rat and a pygmy possum, both undocumented mammals, have been found in the jungles of a remote mountain range in Indonesia’s Papua province.

Scientists from Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Science found and documented the two mammals during an expedition to Papua’s Foja Mountains some months back, the ‘New Scientist’ reported on Tuesday.

“Both mammals — a Cercartetus pygmy possum, one of the world’s smallest marsupials, and a Mallomys giant ratare, are currently under study and are apparently new to science,” the conservation group said. “The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat. With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip,” according to Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, United States.

Mating displays

On this trip in June, the scientists, accompanied by a film crew, also recorded the mating displays of several little known birds for the first time, including the black sicklebill bird of paradise and golden-fronted bowerbird.
“It’s comforting to know that there is a place on Earth so isolated that it remains the absolute realm of wild nature,” Bruce Beehler, the Vice President of Conservation International, who led the expedition, was quoted as saying.

Unroaded forest

The Foja wilderness is part of the Mamberamo Basin, the largest unroaded tropical forest in Asia Pacific region.
With 42 million hectares (104 million acres) of tropical forests and some of the richest bio-diversity in the world, Papua is considered as one of the Indonesia’s last rainforest frontiers.

But it is under threat from increased clearing for palm oil plantations as well as illegal logging.
It may be mentioned that on their first trip in 2005 to the same stretch of jungle — dubbed by the Conservation International as a ‘Lost World’ because of its remoteness and biological richness — the scientists had found dozens of exotic new species of plants and insects.