By: Samantha Lock On: 19/01/2026 06:00

A small, slender, seldom-flowering Australian shrub thought to be extinct is “clinging on by its fingertips” after a citizen scientist made a fortuitous discovery.

The plant, with the scientific name Ptilotus senarius, hadn’t been seen in Australian soil since 1967, but a chance encounter with a bird enthusiast in northern Queensland has given scientists renewed hope.

Horticulturalist and bird bander Aaron Bean stumbled across the species in June when he “opportunistically” photographed a few plants while working on private property in the Gilbert River region.

He then uploaded the photos to the citizen scientist platform iNaturalist, a database now synonymous with convicted mushroom murderer Erin Patterson.

“Serendipitously, we had another Bean – Tony Bean – who happened to be browsing that particular group of plants at the time on the iNaturalist website and immediately got excited when he saw the photo,” Thomas Mesaglio from the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences said.

“This particular plant is susceptible to cattle grazing pressure and the conclusion was it was probably extinct.

“But it’s actually clinging on by its fingertips.”

Identification of the plant was later confirmed by Mr Mesaglio and a team of researchers after a specimen was collected from the property.

The researchers say the rediscovery highlights the growing power of citizen science data in research and conservation.

“Now suddenly, you’ve got people across the whole country who could record something,” Mr Mesaglio said.

“We can massively expand our eyes and ears across the country (and) it facilitates this orders-of-magnitude increase in the sheer volume of data collected.”

Discoveries from regular citizens are often able to capture observations from hard-to-reach places, publish data instantly and connect it with expert identifiers worldwide.

Mr Mesaglio hopes scientists, conservationists and the public will increasingly use databases such as iNaturalist to rediscover lost species and monitor the ranges of known species.

“People can be curious about the natural world, to photograph things they come across …. you never know how significant it might be,” he said.