Strange & Unknown

16 July 2009 11:09 UK

Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News

A tiny species of shrew has been rediscovered in the wild, more than a century after first being described.

In 1894, a handful of specimens of the Nelson’s small-eared shrew were collected in southern Mexico.

But the shrew was never seen again, and was considered by many experts to already be extinct.

That was until two researchers found three shrews in a small patch of forest, a find that is reported in the journal Mammalian Biology.

The Nelson’s small-eared shrew (Cryptotis nelsoni) is named after the man who first discovered it.

In 1894, Edward Nelson and Edward ...

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