Undated photo of the "Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise", rediscovered during an expedition to the Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea in Indonesia. (Photo: REUTERS)

    BEIJING, Feb. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- An international expedition team on Tuesday announced that they have found a "lost world" in Indonesia's most remote provinces, home to dozens of exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants.

    "It really was like crossing some sort of time warp into a place that people hadn't been to," said Bruce Beehler of the wildlife expedition he co-led in December into the isolated Foja Mountains on the tropical South Pacific island of New Guinea.

    The team of 25 scientists rode helicopters to boggy clearings in the pristine zone.

    "We just scratched the surface," Beehler was quoted as saying by Reuters. "Anyone who goes there will come back with a mystery."

    Minutes after the small team were dropped into a boggy lake bed and set up camp near the mountain range's western summit, they said they encountered a new species of bird _ a red-faced and wattled honeyeater.

    The next day they saw Berlepsch's Six-wired Bird of Paradise, described by hunters in the 19th century and named for the wires that extend from its head in place of a crest.

    Giant crowned pigeons, small wallaby kangaroos, cassowary birds, tree kangaroos, and wild boars are abundant within an hour's walk of the village. The Kwerba told the expedition members the locals had never ventured farther into the forest.

    Two locals from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the mountain range, accompanied the expedition, and "they were as astounded as we were at how isolated it was," Beehler said.

    "As far as they knew, neither of their clans had ever been to the area."

    There is no immediate conservation threat to the region, which was designated a wildlife sanctuary by the Indonesian government more than two decades ago.

    "The dripping moss forests of the Foja Mountains are one of the last places on Earth where humans have failed to make an imprint," said Richards, the other expedition co-leader. "That they harbor such a treasure trove of biological novelties adds even greater importance to the protection of this spectacular area."

    The December expedition was organized by U.S.-based Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and funded by the National Geographic Society and several other organizations. Enditem

    (Agencies)