Lost And Found

A team of international scientists say they have found a "lost world" in an Indonesian jungle, home to dozens of new species of animals and plants.

The scientists claim to have discovered 20 frog species, four butterfly species and at least five new types of palms.

The team - from the US, Indonesia and Australia - surveyed a region near the Foja Mountains in Papua province in eastern Indonesia, which covers an area of more than a million hectares (two million acres) of forest.

One of the team's most remarkable discoveries was a honey-eater bird with a bright orange patch on its face - the first new bird species to be sighted in the area for more than 60 years.

They also found a Golden-Mantled Tree Kangaroo, which was previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction, and took the first known photographs of the Berlepsch's Six-Wired Bird of Paradise, first described by hunters in the 19th Century.

Some of the creatures the team came into contact with were also remarkably unafraid of humans. Two Long-Beaked Echidnas, primitive egg-laying mammals, even allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied.

The December 2005 expedition was organised by the US-based organisation Conservation International, together with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.