A shark with black beady eyes and a blunt snout, long thought to be extinct, has been captured in a river in northern Borneo, a conservation group announced Thursday.
Until this discovery, the only known Borneo river shark existed as a century-old specimen in a museum in Vienna, Austria.But earlier this year, villagers caught one in the Kinabatangan River in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island, the Switzerland-based IUCN-The World Conservation Union said.
Scientists examined the young, 311/2-inches-long female and identified it as a species of river shark. All four or five known river species worldwide are either highly endangered or already extinct.
Officials in Sabah have said that sharks as well as stingrays have long vanished from the state's rivers, but local fishermen disagreed.
The IUCN's shark specialist group had been working in Sabah since January 1996, in conjunction with the state's Department of Fisheries.
Conservationists have become alarmed in recent years by the dramatic drop in both the number and species of sharks, among the oldest animals on earth.