Free Republic

Conservationists are in the Dominican Republic attempting to save one of the world's most strange and ancient mammals - the Hispaniolan solenodon. While trying to track down one of these creatures, The Last Survivors team is also trying to find out exactly how this animal has been able to survive for a remarkable 76 million years.

With its long snout and tiny body covered with spiky, long brown hair, the worm-munching creature known as Solenodon Cubanus long has been a mystery to zoologists, who believed it to be extinct. But a farmer in eastern Cuba recently found the first live specimen of the ancient and enigmatic creature seen in four years, local media said. The find proved conclusively that Solenodon Cubanus still survives, and raised hopes that the curious animal dubbed "Alejandrito" may have other relatives roaming the island. "Only a few have been seen since the 1980s," David Long of the California Academy of Sciences'...

AN insect-eating mammal native to Cuba that was for years believed to be extinct has been found in the island's eastern mountains, a Cuban news agency reported. The discovery of the male insectivore known as an almiqui (pronounced ahl-mee-KEE) raised hopes "that it will not wind up in the catalogue of the irretrievable animals disappearing from the face of the Earth", Prensa Latina said in reporting the discovery. The creature looked like a brownish woolly badger with a long, pink-tipped snout, and could measure up to 50cm, according to Prensa Latina's dispatch yesterday. The nocturnal animal burrowed underground during the...