A prior (re)discovery was claimed in the early 1900s by Richard Meinertzhagen, British ornithologist/theif/plagerist, etc., buuuuut…

In the 1990s, an analysis of Meinertzhagen’s bird collection at the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire, revealed large-scale fraud involving theft and falsification. The birds claimed as specimens collected by Meinertzhagen matched with the ones that had been reported missing from the Natural History Museum and collected by others, such as Hugh Whistler. The style of specimen preparation, and the DNA sequences of the cotton used inside them, matched the cotton used in other specimens prepared by the collectors of the stolen specimens. This corroborated pre-existing hearsay and other evidence.

A species of owl, the forest owlet, thought to have gone extinct, was rediscovered in 1997 based on searches made in the locality where the original specimens were collected. Searches for the bird had failed before as these were made in a locality falsely claimed by Meinertzhagen. More research by Pamela C. Rasmussen and Robert Prýs-Jones indicates the fraud was even more extensive than first thought.