Plant thought extinct for nearly 60 years found again in Australia
A chance sighting and a photo uploaded to the app iNaturalist helped lead to the rediscovery of Ptilotus senarius in remote Queensland.
Ptilotus senarius photographed in Australia in 2025. (Wikimedia Commons/Aaron Bean)
A plant that had not been seen in Australia since 1967 has been found again in Queensland, ending nearly six decades of uncertainty over whether the species had vanished for good.
The shrub, Ptilotus senarius, had long been presumed extinct. But in June 2025, a chance sighting in a remote part of Queensland brought it back into view when horticulturist Aaron Bean spotted the plant while helping band birds and uploaded a photo to the citizen science app iNaturalist.
"Without his opportunistic photographic voucher made on private property, for which he had permission to access, the species would likely have remained ‘lost’ and assumed to be extinct, potentially for years or decades," researchers said in a study published earlier this year in the Australian Journal of Botany.
Known for its pink-purple flowers, the plant had not been recorded since 1967 and has now been reclassified from "extinct" to "critically endangered."
The rediscovery underscores how chance encounters and citizen science are playing a growing role in conservation work, especially when species thought to be gone suddenly reappear.
"Serendipitous rediscoveries of extinct or long-lost plants will doubtless continue to occur through iNaturalist, simply by virtue of the near-continuous stream of plant records uploaded to the platform each day," researchers said.
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