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> I didn’t realise there was a fourth species

Hang on, which are you calling the fourth?

A popular pub-trivia question is how many types of (living) monotremes are there - two (echidna and platypus).

However if the question is how many (living) monotreme species - then (well, up until now) the answer was four - the platypus, plus three species of echidna (Western, Sir David's, and Eastern).

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BBC article on the same news:

"Of the four echidna species three have long beaks, with the Attenborough echidna, and the western echidna considered critically endangered."

We need references stay!

Ah, thanks - I hadn't gone reading other news sites about this article, and had assumed GP was referring TFA, but couldn't see anything that might have inspired that comment.

Though I did note that TFA used the misleading (or simply wrong) phrase:

"A different echidna species is found throughout Australia and lowland New Guinea."

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