A tiny wallaby reappeared after fifty years missing

A rock-wallaby about the length of a loaf of bread has turned up in Western Australia's Kimberley region, half a century after anyone last documented it there. Conservationists from the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and the Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation caught the nabarlek on camera at two sites where it had never been scientifically recorded. The species is endangered, hard to find, and easily confused with two near-identical neighbours. So the team set five night cameras, then collected scat for DNA analysis to rule out the lookalikes. The results confirmed it. The nabarlek is the only wallaby that keeps replacing its molars throughout life, a bit like a shark, which suits a diet of tough shrubs. "This is very exciting and great news for the species," said Larissa Potter, a senior field ecologist. On the Kimberley mainland, the animal has now been documented in fewer than ten spots. Most of the others are museum specimens from the 1950s and 1970s.