Extinction obituary: how the Bramble Cay melomys became the first mammal lost to the climate crisis

Rising seas choked the flora on the tiny mammals' island habitat, and in just a few years they were gone

No one knows how the Bramble Cay melomyses - rodents with large, liquid eyes and reddish-brown fur, small enough to fit in the palms of your hands - ended up on Bramble Cay.

The cay is speck of land about 50km (31 miles) off the coast of Papua New Guinea, at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Were the melomyses washed there on driftwood in a storm? Did they arrive thousands of years ago on a land bridge that no longer exists?