The creature in the footage is Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi), an egg-laying mammal filmed by remote cameras in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains in 2023. It is not a dinosaur, and the footage was not captured in 2025 or 2026. The “dinosaur age” phrasing refers loosely to the ancient ancestry of monotremes, the group echidnas belong to.
What creature was caught on camera?
It was Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, a rare species of long-beaked echidna named for naturalist David Attenborough. It is a monotreme: one of the few living mammals that lay eggs rather than give birth to live young. The University of Oxford described monotremes as one of only five remaining species in this egg-laying mammal group when it announced the rediscovery.
The animal has an unusual combination of features. Expedition lead and Oxford biologist Dr James Kempton described it as having “the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole.”
Was it really from the dinosaur age?
No. The camera footage does not show a dinosaur, nor does it establish that this echidna species dates back to the time of dinosaurs. The phrase is a dramatic shorthand for the deep evolutionary history of monotremes. Kempton said the monotreme branch separated from the rest of the mammal tree about 200 million years ago. That estimate describes the lineage’s divergence, not the age of this individual animal or a confirmed fossil age for this species.
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Where and when was it filmed?
Remote trail cameras photographed and filmed the echidna in the Cyclops Mountains of Papua Province, Indonesia, during a 2023 expedition. The species had not been recorded by science since 1961. Oxford announced its rediscovery on November 10, 2023, after the team obtained the first photographs and video. A later article using the “just caught on camera” framing appeared in June 2025, but the footage itself was made in 2023.
The expedition involved the University of Oxford, Indonesian NGO Yayasan Pelayanan Papua Nenda (YAPPENDA), Cenderawasih University, Papua BBKSDA, Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), and Re:wild. Oxford describes the research as developed with the Yongsu Sapari community and local landowners. The 2025 scientific paper says surveys in 2022 and 2023 were guided by Indigenous and local knowledge.
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How did researchers get the footage?
According to Oxford’s 2023 account, the expedition put more than 80 trail cameras in the forest, spent four weeks surveying, and made multiple ascents totaling more than 11,000 metres of climbing. After nearly four weeks without an image, the echidna appeared on the last day, in the final images on the last memory card.
The peer-reviewed 2025 paper reports that the 2023 survey produced 110 photographs across 26 independent capture events from six cameras, as well as 15 videos. These figures describe the documented camera-trap records; they are not a count of individual echidnas or an estimate of the species’ population.
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What does the rediscovery tell us about the species?
It confirms that Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna still survives in the Cyclops Mountains, its known range. It does not establish how many animals remain, whether the population is increasing, or whether the species is secure. Oxford described the species as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List in its 2023 announcement; that status should not be treated here as a freshly checked 2026 assessment.
The long search also illustrates why local and Indigenous knowledge matters in wildlife surveys. Oxford credited the relationship built over several years with the Yongsu Sapari community as central to the expedition’s success, while the scientific paper notes that local and Indigenous knowledge informed the surveys.
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Sources and further reading
- University of Oxford: expedition announcement and rediscovery details
- npj Biodiversity: 2025 camera-trapping paper
- Expedition Cyclops: echidna information and comments from Dr James Kempton
- The Daily Galaxy: June 2025 article using the “dinosaur age” headline
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