Discovery
The first specimens were found for sale as meat at a market in Thakhek, Khammouan in 1996. Remains of three additional animals were obtained in 1998 from villagers and in an owl pellet. Interestingly, the researchers also obtained two additional rodent species and one insectivore on that expedition that were unknown to science. Scientists were, however, able to assign these animals to known genera (one rodent to Leopoldamys, and the insectivore to Hylomys) or a known subfamily (as in the case of Saxatilomys in the rodent subfamily Murinae).
Return trips to Laos by the Wildlife Conservation Society researchers have uncovered several other specimens. These new discoveries have prompted the suggestion that the animals may not be as rare as once thought.
On June 13, 2006, David Redfield, a professor emeritus of Florida State University, and Thai wildlife biologist Uthai Treesucon announced they had captured, photographed and videotaped a live specimen of the species in the village of Doy in Laos.
Read more about this topic: Laotian Rock Rat
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)